We never try to do “everything” when we visit a large city. First, we know we will never get to “everything.” Second, being old, we regularly schedule days of rest – as we tell people, when you are in your own home, you don’t try to go sightseeing every day! And third, we know we will return to our favorite cities, so there has to be something left for future visits!
Some people were surprised that we never had been to Bondi Beach, even though we have visited Sydney several times. Now that we have experienced it, we will certainly return every time we are in Sydney! It was so beautiful, and warm, with gloriously blue water. It is a magnet for surfers, and we watched them for a while, riding waves all the way onto the beach. There were a few ice cream and coffee places, but the main street, up above the beach, is just filled with shopping and dining venues, so the beach is fine without adding more.
The Sydney Festival of the Arts began this week, and we attended two very interesting theater offerings. One was a drama, “Boys & Girls,” which was a one-woman play that took a devastating turn. The playwright, Dennis Kelly, apparently is known for introducing dark turns in his writing. This did not disappoint! The other show we saw was a contemporary opera, “Sun & Sea,” in Town Hall. The hall, where we saw the Christmas Concert when we first arrived, was transformed into a beach! Tons of sand were brought in, and the staging was set up – lots of beach towels for lounging, and people playing beach games, eating, reading, and talking. A dog was walking around, and several children were crawling in the sand. The entire time, elegies were being sung, sometimes solos, and sometimes in chorus, about the environment and personal relationships. The audience entered the space in the balcony, and we kept moving until we had circled the action – then, people left whenever they felt like leaving! Tickets were spaced 30 minutes apart, and when the last song was finished (as we followed along in the program), they started with the first song again. It was just a lazy afternoon at the beach! It was fascinating to see staging as we had never before seen.
Below, there are some other, random photos from around Sydney. We like walking around and seeing what happens! Tonight we are attending “Amadeus” at the Sydney Opera House to round out our weekend theater-going. We have loved traveling now that the Covid scare has been somewhat mitigated through our being fully vaccinated and boostered, and now that theaters have opened up again. We always have to search for what is on in any city (and some make it very difficult!), but we love anything that is out of the ordinary, out of the box, as our two shows so far this weekend have been.
This one-woman play, Girls & Boys, by Dennis Kelly, was gut-wrenching. He is a British writer, one of the screenwriters for the Brad Pitt movie, World War Z. The role was first played by Carey Mulligan, but Justine Clarke was amazing – alone on stage, she memorized two hours of dialogue. It was incredible. Mike said he didn’t think he could memorize that much dialogue even if given infinite time to do so.
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