Condensed weekend update

Shabbat dinner with friends
lots of reading, some aloud
trying to use super glue and failing
Cities & Knights

I'm gluing metal keys onto painted wood. Does anyone know what kind of glue I should try instead? It doesn't have to be very strong, since I'll be using a sealant on the whole thing afterward.

Tycho&Kepler

Thursday night I went to see Tycho&Kepler put on by the Industrial Theatre, in the Leverett Old House Library (ie, a Harvard dorm space). It was developed by the group, rather than one playwright.

The space is a partially underground rather lofty room, with a stage that's merely a step up from the floor. There are entrances at each corner, in addition to the two main exits, reached by stairs in the room (I have no idea if it's wheelchair accessible or not).

The set for the play included the main stage area, most of the floor, and some of the stairway as well, with the audience in two rows on either side, facing inward. Around the room were tall, tall blackboards (I assume someone got to have fun with blackboard paint) with all sorts of astronomical and astrological figuring on them. There were also one or two 'astronomical' instruments, a few chairs, a table, and a lectern with an open tome atop it. It felt physically sparse, but perfectly sufficient for the show.

The lighting was fine, with the usual sorts of spotlights at appropriate moments. In other words, solid, not creative.

The sound, on the other hand, was more interesting, with a bell being chimed at intervals, and a woman 'voicing over' certain sentences that seemed to return again and again.

( notes from the theatre's web site )

The play revolves around the two astronomers, mostly before and during their shortened partnership. The third actor plays a variety of other roles, including a drover, a servant, a bishop, and Kepler's mother, while the fourth actor plays a modern academic of some sort. He is sometimes in the background, sometimes not, a touch of current trends (not only astronomically, but in interview styles as well). It's a play of cycles, ideas coming around again and again, showing how this time, maybe this time, there will be a breakthrough, not only finally getting good data, but also in a theory that accounts for all the data as well. I enjoyed seeing the astronomical/religious battles over the Earth's place in the universe.