Saturday Julius Caesar in Africa

This morning I went to the running shoe shop where I bought my New Balance Minimus shoes last year. There are wearing out so I thought I would take the opportunity to buy a new pair. ( 2/3 price of that in Australia). Then I bought some wool at Knitty City. There was far too much choice.

This afternoon I went to Brooklyn to the 1 of the 3  BAM ( Brooklyn Academy of Music)  performance spaces.. It  was founded in 1861 and is the country’s oldest performing arts centre.. The Theatre  I was in  had not been restored. It looked a bit like chunks of the pillars might come off at any minute.  When I went in, about 15 min before the start, there was a group of musicians playing African music and various ‘village people’ wandering around, chatting and dancing. They became the crowd in the first scene. All the actors were black from the Royal Shakespeare company.  They were talking in the sing-song voices that I associate wit Africans which often fitted the language well. The  actors all moved with typical loose-limbed ease . The part when Cassius and Brutus were arguing , at the beginning of the 2^nd half, was very realistic..

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 Often in the subways I have heard announcements  ‘ Tell us if you see something strange’ , ‘be nice to others’ etc . It was interesting on the subway home.  The train was quite full and at a station several people who had seats  got off.. 2 young girls  who had been standing dived for the 2 available seats and 2 old ladies who just came in dived for the same  2 seats.   One old lady got one and 1 young girl got one. She would not budge despite the glares of the standing old ( in her 80’s) lady. The guy the other side of the young girl got up, she slid along and old lady sat down. About 2 minutes later there was ‘ please give your seat up for the old or sick’ message.  About 10 minutes later a beggar got onto the train and walked through my carriage asking for money. Everyone ignored him except one person who gave him a few coins.  2 minutes later there was a ‘donot give anything to beggars’ notice over the loadspeaker.  I wonder if there is a person (s) sitting somewhere watching the video cameras in all the carriages  - the trains are very long- or is it just random which carriages he watches?

I stopped at an Italian restaurant on the way home for dinner – about 4 streets to cross. I will get back to my project on Monday.