With Spoleto wrapped, I’m left with a blur of memories, impressions and observations on the festival. Here are just a few of them.

An audience member filming Harvard Sailing Team’s opening night with her cellphone, distracting the people sitting behind her (including me) as she emailed the hilarious sketches to her friends…

Oversized patrons at the Chapel Theatre, trying to squeeze into the small seats. Some of the grossest guests had to ride side saddle.

Rodney Lee Rogers sitting patiently behind a small curtain for 45 minutes, the audience gathering around him before The Tragedian.

Two old dears I met at the first performance of A Devil Inside who’d been to so many shows that they couldn’t remember what they’d seen the night before, and started arguing about it. The festival had been running for two days.

The miserable actors in This War is Live who were fed up with the show and its technical hiccups… one complained about his simplistic character, while another called the whole experience “torturous.” He should have counted himself fortunate – he wasn’t sitting in the audience…

Sitting next to two of the playwrights of Under the Lights: 10×10 – and trying to make mental review notes without making them feel uncomfortable…

Jay Clifford courageously performing at the American Theatre despite suffering from some debilitating lurgy. After the first night, he conked out in his truck… on the second night, his manager Vance McNabb picked up his bug. They put on a great show, they’re both feeling better now and they’re no longer contagious (I hope).

Watching rehearsals with Chen Shi-Zheng, director of Monkey: Journey to the West… and being invited to look at the aftermath of The Great War after Hotel Modern’s show was over. I witnessed chaos on a model train scale.

One of my favorite elements of the festival, though, was bumping into the various local and national theatre performers, artists and filmmakers who collaborate to help make the festival function. Without their hard work and the overwhelming enthusiasm of the audience, there’d be no festival… thanks to them all.

There’s two more videos from Geoff to come, here’s one of them - some quick clips from the Piccolo closing ceremony on Saturday.

Richard Hagerty’s Piccolo Spoleto poster image is a fascinating marriage of family-friendly colors and impish myth. Hagerty has an invitational show at the Corrigan Gallery on Queen Street, and the opening way back on May 15 (which seems like a lifetime ago) was well attended.

I hit the show early expecting it to be fairly quiet. Instead, I could hardly squeeze in the door. The gallery was packed with lively figurative work, abstract paintings and a crowd of attendees. Viewers were intrigued and collectors snapped up six artworks.

I managed to break out of the mob long enough to grab a few photos of the exhibition, which is up through June 15 and has create a surge of visits to the gallery.

“We’ve sold a bunch of pieces and had lots and lots of interest,” says Lese Corrigan, owner of the gallery and a fine artist in her own right. “There’s been a fascination with the variety of Richard’s artwork and his ability to be a surgeon and still be a prolific artist. He’s been doing both in parallel for 30 years.”

Usually, Piccolo poster artists get their own shows at one of the Office of Cultural Affairs’ City Gallery spaces. But with the Dock Street Theatre closed for refurbishment and its back-up space the Gaillard kind of busy with Spoleto, it fell to Corrigan to present Hagerty’s art.

“I’d already set this show and the opening before Richard was asked to be the Piccolo poster artist,” says Corrigan. “I think we helped the city by providing a venue, and the gallery was helped with high visibility and having the original image for the poster hanging in the front window. It’s worked out well for everyone.”

Hagerty’s eclectic exhibition includes images and colors that seem to have leaped from a children’s storybook, alongside sophisticated art and hints of Miro, Kandinsky and Escher. The work of other artists, including Corrigan, Karin Olah and Manning Williams, are on display too. Corrigan’s mascot is also there – a crimson fish called Dot. That way, there will always be a red Dot in the gallery.

Directing the adventure-opera Monkey: Journey to the West has been an epic experience for Chen Shi-Zheng. He’s had to deal with switched cast members and a different conductor for the US version of the show; a smaller space and a different configuration to squeeze the extravaganza into the Sottile; and a lot of hype to live up to.

“It’s been a journey making this production,” Mr. Chen told me just before he left town last week. “From a childhood fascination with the legend to all this.” Appreciating that a show like this becomes bigger than one person’s enthusiasm for a story, he has collaborated closely with his young cast to pass on some of his passion for Monkey to the actors, acrobats and martial artists.

“I forced them to read Wu Cheng-en’s novel Journey to the West,” he grinned. Used to visual stimuli in general and Chinese cartoons in particular, the performers were reluctant to plough through a 500-year-old book. But it was part of their job description, and their appreciation for the tale grew as a result. “It’s a fantasy journey that’s an allegory for Buddhism,” said Chen. “The idea of multiple universes and realities is Buddhist. It will find its place in the world, because the character is one of a kind.”

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Marc Bamuthi Joseph put on an impressive show over two dates at the Emmett Robinson last week. His poetic speech and movement was combined with hip-hop music, conversational “travel diary” monologues, video interviews shot by Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi and a large moving lighting rig choreographed by James Clotfelter.

Yet for a really intense experience, I went to Bamuthi’s two hour workshop at the Avery Research Center, part of a free “Spoleto at the Avery” program” that ran last week.

At the Emmett Robinson Theatre, Bamuthi shared the stage with all those bells and whistles. In the workshop, there were no such distractions. The performer’s work was a lot more powerful in the intimate classroom environment, and he got to show another side to his work – he mentors teen writers through a “Youth Speaks” literary arts organization.

The workshop was part writing class, part dance-off. Bamuthi began with a demonstration of what he does, switching from hip-hop speech to regular talk about his partner’s pregnancy and a planned natural birth. As he spoke he moved, creating visual images with his physical being, his expressions and his breathing.

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Last night drummer/performer Tommy Shepherd had his flock squirming in their seats as he roved around the Emmett Robinson auditorium, asking them questions with microphone in hand. he was warming up the audience - or cooling it off - before the his cohort Marc Bamuthi Joseph came on stage.

As far as audience participation went, the audience questions were the farthest Bamuthi’s production of the break/s went. As he danced, conversed and poeticized across the boards, he created an incredible impression of a down-to-earth guy with uncanny abilities in discourse and movement.

He says he’s a frequent visitor of Planet Hip-Hop. That would explain his otherwordly skills. But he’ll be workshopping with mere mortals today at 5-7 p.m., part of the Avery Center’s free series of classes and panels.

The Avery is a research center for African-American history and culture at 125 Bull Street, downtown Charleston. Tomorrow, the center will host a panel discussion on the Amistad court case. For more information on either of these events, call the Spoleto team on 843.579.3100.

Elite New York sketch comedy group Harvard Sailing Team are planning a couple of writing workshops while they’re here for Piccolo.

The inventive youngsters don’t do many workshops, and this is an experiment for them to find out how many people in Charleston are hungry for comedy writing knowledge.

There’s just one problem: the classes aren’t in the Piccolo program and information about the Sketch Comedy Writing Classes has been thin on the ground.

I do know this much: the workshops are at Theatre 99 (home of the Have Nots!). They encompass live and video formats, they’re scheduled for May 27th & 28th from 12 to 3 p.m., and both workshops cover the same principles of idea-building and sketch development.

The two classes may be amalgamated depending on the number of sign-ups, so nothing’s set in stone yet. But this is definitely a good opportunity to find out how the team consistently comes up with its nuggest of comedy gold.

To sign up contact 843-853-6687 or email TheHaveNots2000@aol.com

- Nick Smith