Saturday was Mer’s day, and she started it out with work (kind of). Mer is the coach to for the junior high Academic Challenge team, which is sort of like teams playing Jeopardy!, with the kids having to answer questions in various rounds on various subjects. She tries to take her team to two or three tournaments a year, and this one fit well in the schedule. It was at Hawken, an affluent private school fairly nearby (about thirty minutes away).

Since I always seem to get pressed into reading questions, Mer just went ahead and volunteered me for the job. I like it pretty well, although my voice starts to give out later in the tournament since I am not used to talking that much. This tournament was being run by a Hawken alum who had started a non-profit group to encourage learning and education, and a couple features this group brought were computerized scoring and questions. I was comfortable with that, although I had to switch rooms at the last minute, and it took about twenty minutes to get the technology ready in the new room; also, the external screen with the score and timing clock went out on me in the middle of one round, but that was fixed pretty quickly by a suggestion or two from a helpful audience member who reminded me to check a computer setting when I was focused on the various cables. He was right.

One amusing aspect of being a reader – in the brief training we received, we were assured that there were not many foreign words and names to stumble over. That was a boldfaced lie – I had foreign words and names in every round, and many of them were from Asian languages. I managed as best I could, and I only messed up a couple of times on the scoring or on answers, which is not bad over fifteen rounds during the day.

Hawken fed us, which was very kind, and we wrapped up around 2:00. Our two junior high teams did not fare too well on the score sheet, but they were competitive in most rounds.

In the evening, Mer took me up to Playhouse Square, to a small theater to which we had not yet been. The theater only held about seventy-five people, and was set up as a thrust stage (with seats on three sides). We got good seats in the front row in the center. Mer had gotten us tickets to see a translation of the French play The Misanthrope.

It is a very interesting play about social norms. The main character is a blunt young man who thinks people should be completely honest all the time, and not worry about being polite. He hangs out in rarefied social circles where politeness is the norm, and the play explores the pros and cons of each view, while managing to be quite funny along the way.

In a nod to how strong the main actor was, I did not realize the play was in rhymed couplets until another character spoke. People do not rhyme in normal conversation, and it amazed me that the man playing the main role could speak so seemingly naturally, while speaking in a very artificial way.

The acting was quite good, although the lead actor was the one who stood out to me. There was one character who felt rushed to me – he seemed to feel the need to get to the rhyme at the ends of lines as quickly as possible. His acting was fine, but his line delivery needed a little work.

The set was simple, as sets tend to be when on a thrust stage. The stage was set up as one of two rooms, with chairs and a sofa and other small furniture.

The biggest negative of the play came from the audience. A man in the front row of one of the sides of the stage actually checked his cell phone while the lights were down, and continued to do so even after the actors came out and started speaking. The man’s whole face was lit up in the light of his screen. It makes me frustrated and worried that people are becoming socially stupid because of technology. I think he missed the irony of being rude while watching The Misanthrope.

Still, other than that incident, the evening was pretty great. The play was thought-provoking and well done, and I got to see one of the new theaters at Playhouse Square.