In which we recount our performance at Oneonta, NY's Hartwick College

A view from backstage.

Oneonta, NY has ireperabley endeared upstate NY to me.
Let me qualify that.
Oneonta, NY has become the real-life model of middle America i grew up watching in film and television.
A bustling hamlet, nestled in the rolling autumnal hills of the Catskill mountains, Oneonta is as much a suburban surge of commuters and community centers as it is a college town.
What time i spent walking around downtown had me struck with the multicultural commercialism available to the consummate college-age consumer.  Cuisines from all over, bookstores (generic and graphic), cafes and consignment shops; this place is a shoppers paradise put to the tune of a 'Weird' Al parody.  The real success of the town is that the main drag of the place feels all the world like it is populated exclusively by privately owned small businesses.
If such a place as 'The Real America' existed, it might be something like Oneonta.

A view from the Discovery Space.

It doesn't hurt that they gave us an amazing reception for 'Tis Pity.
that one needs no qualification.
Tis Pity is not a show we have done often enough on the road for us to have any reasonable expectations of how an audience should behave.
This does not, of course, prevent expectation.  Let's not forget who we're talking about here.
What do we expect?  Who's to say?
Expectations are like opinions and excuses, and we all know what those are like.
Silence.  A solid scene and a half of somewhat bewildered silence.  Here comes the Friar and Giovanni and they're talking about whatnow?
'What kind of play have we gotten ourselves into' the vacuous response of the audience would seem to tell us.
And here's a bit of brawling to bring in the bloodthirsty.  Nothin?  K.
A bit of prancing clown-foolery?  A chuckle here and there.  Good!  If we can't get you into the hard stuff, then we hope you like the funny.
Ah, yes.  The wooing of Annabella.
The hard stuff, indeed.
Dead silence through all declarations of love and all offerings of daggers points.
And then, the Kiss.
A rumble rolls across the audience; audible disgust.
These strangers (to each other and to us) see a pair of actors kiss each other in the name of playing at incest and they cannot help but buy it.
We have them.  And, as much as that, they have us.  For the remaining traffic, we are caught up in the delightfully subtle dialogue of the performer and the auditor.
Two hours later they have been with us every step of the way.  Awesome.
Tis Pity is a hard show to take to the unsuspecting community, but if we can take every audience on a trip like the one we took in Oneonta, then i call that a win.