Great to hear that many are enjoying these blogs and following our journey.
No photos on this one as yet, just an update that, we (happily) made a swift exit from Hagerstown, where we saw all of the inside of the motel before back on the road again. 200 miles South, through the state of West Virginia and then down again into Central Virginia, and here we are. As we piled out of the cars and into a restaurant for lunch, we were greeted with a stack of newspapers, featuring us on the front pages! Off to a good start. We have caught the edges of the Floridian storms, and been drenched with rain all day, which, if anything, makes us feel more at home!
Virginia seems immediately different - the architecture is more akin to British red brick housing, and there are some beautiful, white, grand regency style buildings housing the Universities and Colleges. We arrived to one of these buildings - Stuart Hall, which is home to a boarding and day school for 6-12 year olds, and a lovely theatre space which will be our home for the next five days.
Slight headache as we tried to organise the team into host houses, spread far and wide across the town, and
Staunton is famous for its Blackfriars Playhouse, an authentic elizabethan playhouse, modeled on the Globe Theatre in London, and it forms the core of the annual Shakespeare Festival that we will be part of; check out
www.americanshakespearecenter.com
And so we all dispersed to our various homes, and shall re-group tomorrow, to make some noise downtown and make sure we raise our profile and generate enough audience for our four shows. First show on Friday night, so tomorrow is a rehearsal and planning day.
No pictures today - my camera battery died
