Showtime

My Wife loves to go to the theater. I'm certainly a fan of live productions, as well, but I sometimes take a bit of nudging to get motivated to go. She's always ready to nudge. Actually, it's not even just theater, since she loves alternative films at art movie-houses just as much. As much as we both love the movies, we don't actually go out to see them that often. However, when we do go out, it's often just as much about where the movie is playing as it is about what the movie is.

As a side note, she even had a role in a community production of The Crucible, for which she learned how to knit. That's some serious method acting.

At any rate, we've just come off of three shows in four days, all initiated by My Wife. On Saturday we thoroughly enjoyed Jesus Christ Superstar, performed by the Poland Community Players at Poland High School. We saw another production of JCS at the Maine State Music Theater last spring, and I loved it. (All part of my goal of becoming a Jesus scholar.) The Poland show had students in all of the main leads, which was fantastic, and we were both impressed by the quality of the show.

The next night we zipped down to Portland to see Wait Until Dark at the Portland Stage Company. My Wife loves the Portland Stage Company, and I can see it's only a matter of time before we're season ticket holders. I agree it will be a worthwhile investment, although I'm looking to also leverage season tickets to the Portland Sea Dogs AA baseball team out of the deal...

On Monday (with Tuesday off for Veteran's Day) we returned to Portland, ate huge amounts of sushi, and then took in Rachel Getting Married, at Portland's best alternative movie theater, The Movies on Exchange. (Among others, we went there to see Fahrenheit 911 on opening day, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.) I believe My Wife wanted to see this flick -- despite my lobbying for Kevin Smith's Zack & Miri Make a Porno instead -- in large part because it was directed by Jonathan Demme. We have our own Demme story because of her.

A few years ago, she ushered us off to another quirky theater, The Magic Lantern, without telling me what we were seeing. Turns out we saw Demme's remake of The Manchurian Candidate. The reason it was cool was that My Wife had under-the-table information that the director, himself, was going to be there to speak after the film. He's got a lake house nearby. Who knew? Sure enough, after the movie, Jonathan Demme popped up and stood in the aisle for twenty minutes commenting on his films and answering questions. Talk about your personalized Director's Commentary. It was the sort of thing I just LOVE, and we even won cool Manchurian Candidate sweatshirts. (Which, ironically enough, I found myself accidentally wearing on election day this year.)

This is the kind of thing My Wife makes happen.