Saturday was my day, and I decided to spend much of it cooking. I made four loaves of bread, two pizzas, and a pan of chocolate-peanut butter bars. I had invited a slew of people over for 6:00 for “Supper and Shakespeare,” or “Breaking Bread with the Bard.” We were to have dinner and then do our Shakespeare in a Box: Taming of the Shrew party game. It’s Taming of the Shrew edited down to be done by a small group of people in 45 minutes to an hour. It’s a really good time, and we had not done it in about 3 years. It was time.

I have a lot of game and wacky friends who thought doing Shrew was a great idea. Some admitted to me later that they were not sure, but it was gratifying to have them tell me what a great time they had. It was a grand group of people: Zach and Londa, Nate and Rachel (and their young son Jack!), Ami, our colleague (and English teacher) Joy, and a former CVCA teacher and fun person (and quite pregnant), Lis. Ami’s husband, Nate, was able to make it later to mess around with the Wii. So, for Shrew, we had nine people, counting me and Mer.

We had a grand supper – people added to my food with cookies, broccoli salad, banana bread, and apple pie. We had plenty of food, and we ate and chatted for about an hour and a half. Then, we did some warm up games to get our thespian sides moving – these games are suggested by the Shakespeare in a Box guide, and they are very funny. They consist of delivering lines in fun ways (sing the line as opera, or say it like a dirty joke), and in exercises of building a longer speech. Rachel had Jack say her lines, which was pretty darn cute. Raise that nerd child!

We assigned roles randomly, and some fun parts came out of it. Zach was Kate (the main female character), and Ami was Petrucchio (the main male character). The pregnant Lis was a male suitor to Kate’s younger sister (played by Londa, who also played an old man). Mer was Kate’s father. We have open-minded casting in the play.

At any rate, the play itself was a huge hit. We laughed and laughed. Ami (as Petrucchio) smacked Zach (as Kate) on the butt at one point, stopping the play for a few minutes while we roared. The game itself supplies corny props, like Groucho Marx glasses as a disguise and a pretty bad wig (that I got to wear as “the lusty widow”). There was much mirth when Londa and Rachel had to speak in Latin with two Latin teachers in the room (Lis and Ami). We had a great time.

After the play was over, we went back to the food, and with Nate showing up, I broke out the Wii and “Sports Resort” – a game where you try different sports. We focused on archery and sword fighting. Most people had never tried a Wii before, and so we got more than a few laughs watching people fling themselves about.

Another fun entertainment if the evening was a book Mer got me for Christmas. The book Cake Wrecks is based on the website of the same name, where the author shows pictures of commercial cakes gone badly wrong. The cakes usually have funny misspellings or bad drawings on them or the cake failed and fell apart. It is a very funny book, and it made the rounds getting chuckles out of everyone who saw it.

So, our first major party in our “new” house (that we have been in for two-and-a-half years) was a major success. I had a great time, and it seems as if everyone else did too. We’ll have to have more people over, and soon.