Broken record alert -- I've said it before, I'll say it again.
Cambridge is great.
But so is getting out of it to, oh, you know, other, greener places that are nearby.
Today began early for a Sunday, with me leaving my house (coffee in tow, obviously) just before 9am to pick up D. and E. for our first Sunday-in-Georgetown practice for Rumors (Act 2 only, today). We had almost the full cast there today and honestly, it went pretty well. The blocking for Act 2 seems pretty darn straightforward and natural. Funnily, most people (including my character, Chris) are on-stage for nearly all of Act 2 (Chris is there for the whole she-bang) -- but only something like a fifth of my lines are in Act 2, meaning there is a lot of downtime. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH MY HANDS? Honestly, there is so much going on to react to that I don't think it will really be a problem. As long as I hold back on the coffee on performance days.
Georgetown is about a 45-50 minute drive from Cambridge, and it is pretty darling in and of itself -- but another plus is that it's about 25 minutes or so from the beach. Given that no one had brought any beach gear, this seemed like a pipe dream until D. suggested Plum Island, which I had never heard of but which apparently a) has 11 miles of beach which involve lots of beach plums in most summers; b) was long ago featured in a map drawn by Captain John Smith and described by him as having "many sands"; c) has oodles of walking paths and observation towers and some "hellcat interpretive" trails and lots of poison ivy and loads of honeysuckle; and also some black cherries and D. even found one stray blackberry (not for Sal).
Other adventures on Plum Island involved some not-skinny-dipping (totally jumped in with my clothes on) and visiting some sort of soap shop attached to a private residence that smelled magical -- seriously. Soap-making seems to me to be a whole lot like potion-making. Plum swell day (get it?....).
Sorry.
