Subscribe 8: Save Say tickets to all four shows at a 26% discount. June 17 — 28 O l ' A dnllgrizfzzliy‘ unique ” murder mysttvy musical sgnmf basnd an ‘ Agatha f.‘ir.-‘sires’ _ 13,, Ljfjlg .lndfa,v;5_ By James McDonald, David Vos, and Robert Gerlach Northern Vermont’: Professional Actors‘ Equity slim-1sitrH= V ‘ \\\\\‘ . July‘l—1Z A ll.1}Il_l'. ye! !z‘;La.‘.’r:i.y _ 7. partial.‘ of mu: ' rkmlopmonnlyaisaahd t h e L J next door and learn them is By‘ Tom Griffin ~~ no like fume. i “ .”lu'.‘ucm' in collaboration with Howard Solnriunitgr Seances. July 15 - 26 A side srriilling tour on {nice about TIMM, the thin? sn1.3l".’a5t suwmn Texas, par/annex! with quid.--1:/range madness and rip roaring cnmn1;.< GREATER Tuna By Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed l-toward Ju|v25_A“gust3 000000000000 A vibranl ‘-lrdsl ‘Fsh . i ' . . ‘ L I yin . I . celcnranon m‘ . ' . Blnadwayis host 0 Q pcrminrcd by Voimnntis 0 0 own musml thcatn.‘ . . 000000000000 legend Denise Whittier; . A Hill!!! Ill ill! liflllli Lilli! Musical Arrangernent by Tom Cleary Sinai»: tltleét anaétstle until June 2. Order By Phone Order Online 882.554.2281 www.saintniclraetsp|ayhrmsecom Kin llaxilioot , fgxxzuxgatc lfiaslnlnxrakxg :- SAINT ' K llLlC.HAEL’$ 7 COLLEGE E‘ Lee Moffitt Home Loan Consultant (802) 655-3335 Direct E-Mail: tee_moffitt@countrywide.com Water Tower Hill Colchester VT What Makes My Car Tick? Free four-week workshop series brought to you by the R.U.‘l.2? Community Center and Maynard Auto, 65 Huntington Rd, Richmond VT. 10% Off purchases for ‘ participants’ while class is in session! Classes will be held from 6-8pm every Monday during the month of June at the Maynard Auto Shop. The series will provide participants with basic knowledge of how to locate and replace car parts. brake system, exhaust system, and bodywork repair needed to get a car inspected. Participants will be using their own car during class. Each class is free and open to the public, Participation in every class is encouraged but not required. Space is limited, so please register by calling. To register, or to get more information about each week‘s class, contact R.U.1.2? 860- 7812, or Maynard, 434-2806. Blossom and Thorn on the Summer Solstice Demetrius.‘ I’ll run free from thee and hide me in the brakes, - and leave thee to the mercy of_ wild beasts. Helena: The wildest hath not such a heart as you, Run when you will, the story shall be changed: Apollo flies and Daphne holds the chase! — A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ' Act II, Scene 1 ex, Sex, Sex! Yes, this col- umn is all about sex and spirituality, so if you aren’t interested in reading about ritual orgasms you can stop right here and move on to the Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green. Many of us went through our college productions of A Midsummer Nights Dream secret- ly hoping that poor Helena was just a frustrated fag hag, and those handsome boys, Demetrius and Lysander, would eventually get over it, declare their true love, and go bounding off through the woods to live happily ever after. Alas! It doesn’t work out that way, although Puck gives us a couple of opportune moments when the magic flower (a PANSY! — now purple with lovc’s wound) could go just a little astray and create the desired effect. As he so ofien does, Shakespeare’s work skirts the bounds of the expected and forces us to consider other possibilities. For in this Midsummer story, with the sun at its height, Shakespeare puts all the action in the short hours between dusk and dawn. He takes the sun god Apollo’s power and up-ends it through the magic ‘ spells of the faeries, creating chaos that can only be resolved by Duke Theseus with the return of the morning light. In Helena’s speech, quoted above as she chas- es the recalcitrant Demetrius, she tells us that she is reversing gen- der roles. She proclaims that the nymph Daphne, for two thousand years a mythological figure of the hunted woman, will instead chase down the sun god Apollo and demand his love. With countless “Shakespeare in the Park” produc- tions in cities and towns across America, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the ways in which modem people ritualize our Summer Solstice. The Summer Solstice, also known to pagans as the Festival of Litha, is the longest day (or the shortest night) of the year. It is the peak, or the zenith, of our contact with the sun and represents a major tuming point as the days begin to get shorter and decline toward Yule, the Winter Solstice. The ritualized produc- tions of Shakespeare’s play, con- nected with the Solstice, can remind us that the origin of all theater, but especially that descended from the medieval European passion plays, is liturgi- cal. The Summer Solstice is a bittersweet holiday, representing thejoy of full summer and the first taste of decline as well. At the Solstice, we celebrate the consum- mation of the wedding of the Horned God and the May Queen at Beltane, yet we also stand with the first realization that we will cycle back to the darkness. For this reason, many Summer; Solstice rituals incorporate’ crowns of roses in firll bloom. The blos- soms are beautiful, abundant, bright red and shining; but under the blossoms are the thorns that prick and cause us to bleed, just a little. In a world filled with cal- endars, clocks, watches, comput- ers, start times and deadlines, we don’t keep track of time the way the ancients did. With electric lights brightening our homes and polluting our night skies, and with few of us working the land and rising up to greet the dawn, we are disconnected from the natural cycles of sun, moon, and stars. But for our ancestors, the astro- nomical cycles guided their daily lives, provided opportunities for myth-making and ritualizing and in many ways created a structure that ensured survival. In early agricultural societies, communities could measure where they should be in their food production and consumption based on sun cycles. In many of the ancient religions, the deities of the Sun and Moon, like Apollo and Daphne, chase each other through the sky. But in many cases they are not lovers or would-be lovers but rather brother and sister. Apollo’s counterpart is actually his twin sister Artemis (or Diana in the Roman tradition), and many Native American peoples have Brother Sun and Sister Moon tra- ditions. Rarely are the roles reversed, with the Sun as feminine and the moon masculine. With the moon reflecting the sun’s light, the plethora of male sun gods and female moon goddesses may be seen as mani- festations of patriarchy. It may be symbolic of men dominating women and women reflecling the power of men, but I believe that is a far too simplistic explanation. Women’s cycles of menstruation are connected to the moon cycle and women’s mysteries ofien hap- pened in the dark ofthe moon, This year my Summer Solstice celebration will be guided by meditations on right use of power. The Sun at its height is all- powerful, bringing us all we need to build a world of abundance. But with that power is also great dan- ger, for like the willful and egotis- tical Icarus, if we fly too close to the sun, we will melt our wings and we will plunge headlong into the sea. The image of the blossom and thorn sticks with me at this time of year, there can be great’ beauty in power used for creation and great pain in the power of destruction. We see this in Apollo’s attempted ravishing of Daphne (fortunately, she escaped, unharmed — rescued by Gaca, the earth mother). The sun is both The Summer Solstice is a bittersweet holidayf representing the joy of full summer and the first taste of decline as well. life-gi._ving and murderous, Apollo is an archer who shoots his arrows from afar but also a healer who drives away illness. He is a god of great skill in prophecy and divina- tion: the Oracle at Delphi was one of his most well-known temples. And yet in most world religions, even ancient Greek religion, div- ination was reserved for the dark spirits of the underworld. As queer people, all of us have experienced power misused. One of our most mythological moments, the Stonewall Rebellion occurred in the hot days around the Summer Solstice. 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