You have certainly not lived if you have not sat through an hour and a half of an Italian comedian. We thought we were going to music or maybe a series of short acts, but no, it was way worse than that. He kept calling on people in the audience so we were afraid to leave. Eventually we slunk out while his back was turned.
The performance was at the foot of the facade of the Church of San Francesco. The church has a weathered, yellow orche, stone facade with a dark wooden door about 20 feet tall. On either side of the door 20 foot tall mermen gazed impassively over the crowd. Their blank expressions say that they have seen worse than this. Above the door is a large face of a child flanked by two wings, as you might see on a tombstone. His sightless eyes focused across to the mountains over the laughing faces below. Various other cherubs and strange stone animals rest on the columns. None of them were laughing. The comedian, dwarfed by the church, was below on a red stage. Although I could not understand most of what he said, he did use expansive gestures, many of which I know from my book, “Understanding Italian without Words”. I did understand when he apologised to the priest for his jokes and I am sorry to say he told a lot of fart jokes with convincing sound affects.
Last night was the first time the bell tower has been lit from inside. It was so beautiful. The bell tower is massive and looms over the church. With the lights on I could see inside the bells and the new supports that have been put in to brace the tower against earthquakes. So it was quite a night and Jim wore his coat and I wore my sweat shirt. That is a giant change in the weather. It was perfect.
This morning the guy in charge of culture came and picked us and my paintings up and took us to the small church that is the site for my show. It will start tonight at 6:30 and I guess end about 8:30 when people go home for dinner. I was not sure about that part of the evening. We are not having any food at the opening so when I will get to eat dinner is a concern of mine. I want to thank my friend, Marcia, so much for speaking to Armando on the phone and then telling me what he had said. i had no idea what we were talking about, but it seemed important. Grazie mille, Marcia and brava!
Finally I am having a show in a nice place. It is an old church that is now used for concerts or meetings. It is beautiful with arches and a stage with red curtains. They shut the curtains and I hung all my water-colour portraits on a clothes line in front of it. The clothes line with clothes pins is a great way to hang unframed paintings. There were just the right number of hooks in the walls for all my paintings. It is a big problem to put hooks in walls here and anything like fun-tack or double side tape takes the paint off the walls so it was perfect. It has been raining here for a couple of days so if it rains tonight there will be no problem.
Here I am waiting to be picked up. IKEA bags are quite useful
This cat personified “devil cat” with its huge pink ears lurking under the Church of San Elizabeta.
This cat personified “devil cat” with its huge pink ears lurking under the Church of San Elizabeta.
No comments:
Post a Comment