Today, Butter and I (currently both "domestic goddesses" by day) caught our third free Shakespeare showing in the city this summer - this time, we saw Twelfth Night on Governor's Island.



As I approached Castle Clinton (a fort built in 1812) I saw a bunch of shiny, drapey Liberty ladies. I'm guessing this was for Labor Day because there were a lot of tourists.

This is the entrance to Castle Clinton, which is in Battery Park and right against the water.  I saw Cat Power sing here once.




I like how low and round the fort is. During concerts, I've noticed some people hang out in those indented window areas and watch through the bars. It's nice in the early evening.





I was walking down toward Picnick, our meeting place - a little sandwich kiosk - and past this flowery little path. All the way down to the end of the path and past the water is Liberty Island and the Statue of Liberty, which are hard to see here. I'll put a little question mark directly above it so you can see where I mean. (And though this was completely unintentional, go ahead and see it as ingenious symbolism and take a moment to reflect - and be honest with yourself:  how much progress will truly be made in America within the next decade? Election: Circus, or opportunity?).

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It barely felt like our ferry began to move when we landed at Governor's Island. (We noticed later, looking at the distance to Southern Manhattan that it was basically just a mile or so across).  This is Castle Williams, on Governor's Island, which was also built around 1811 or so. I think this fort had something to do with holding Confederate captives during the Civil War.




We were like, whoa, those are some big ass bricks.
It turned out they're red sandstone blocks.




Butter doing an imitation of Ivy's pic of me trying to be sexy against the brick wall in Brooklyn (in "Giant Land.") Except Butter wouldn't do the sexy. Dammit.




After emerging from the port o' potty virtually unscathed (re: which, by the way, favorite quote from Butter thus far, in her Manhattan-born-and-bred accent:  "I haven't been in one of these since France")  with only a peripheral spiderweb haunting the recesses of my mind and no poopy sneakers to speak of - we saw actors getting ready backstage.




Wow, that's really weird. I could swear the sign in the middle said "Twelfth Night," from beginning to end. Right now it looks like it says something much longer, like: "The Twelfth Night that I Served that Lady Who Wanted My Booty Before She Realized I Wasn't Actually a Man." Which is kind of what the story is about. Um. Sort of.




This was my view from the grass to my right. The island was full of these historical, well-preserved Federalist style buildings.




A nice Joni Mitchell song came on as people waited. I think it was "Blue."






There was a smoke machine. They only used it a couple of times, and once was in the very beginning.





Read this if you're interested in Twelfth Night, otherwise, skim if you want:

This is Viola in front of the stage, played by a very talented actress who reminded me a teeny bit of Michelle Obama (- you gotta cut me some slack for comparing because A) Michelle Obama is all over the place right now and B) this woman was also very charismatic.)
Anyway, Viola is stranded on the shores of Illyria, which is now modern-day Croatia/Albania/Montenegro or so.
And she is separated from her twin brother, Sebastien. Viola pretends to be a man. She enters the service of a Duke named Orsino, who is in love with Lady named Olivia.




These are the some of the people at the home of Lady Olivia.




In the foreground, Viola is pretending to be a man as she serves Duke Orsino. Duke Orsino is in love with Lady Olivia, so Viola has to send love messages on his behalf.




But since Viola (right) is so eloquent and passionate as she acts as messenger, Lady Olivia (left) falls in love with her. She doesn't know Viola is actually a woman. This part was actually very well done because both actresses were great so the humor of the situation really came off well.




In the meantime, Sebastien, Viola's brother (left) washes up on shore somewhere.




These are Lady Olivia's subjects again. I don't remember what they're doing.




But they were cute. The two older folks were dancing.




This is Malvolio (center stage), who is Lady Olivia's main servant. He was hilarious. He's totally in love with Lady Olivia, and the guys in back think he's arrogant so they write a letter to him as if from her, and he gets all excited and happy about it. Poor dude.




This is already sort of at the end. See the brother and sister, Sebastien and Viola, who are wearing similar outfits? Luckily for them all, things work out in the end.
Lady Olivia gets over Viola and falls in love with Sebastien, the brother (left side). Duke Orsino, who Viola was working for originally, falls in love with Viola (she loved him from the beginning of the play). They all live happily ever after.




This is kind of sad, though it was supposed to be funny:  I guess after those guys tricked Malvolio into thinking Olivia loved him, he went crazy and was sent to some ward. This is him after he's come out of it. And as he's telling Lady Olivia about the whole thing, she's surprised because she never knew anything about the fake letters, or that they were doing that to him.




In the story, the reason those people wrote the fake love letters was because they thought Malvolio was pompous and they wanted to teach him a lesson. They even got him to parade around in this bizarre yellow suit, as he thought she suggested in a letter.
I didn't get a pic of it.
I guess since it's a comedy, it sort of comes off as if he needed a kick in the pants, and I guess he comes out of it okay in the end.  But a rather odd story, when you think about it. 




After the play, we walked around and looked at the preserved buildings. This one was super long (much longer than what you see here). Reminded me of the Louvre in terms of length.








It turned out this building was an important meeting place in the eighties! We were wondering if they private-boated in or helicoptered in or what.






I don't officially belong to any religious order (I believe in some Christian, Buddhist, and Taoist principles) but I really like churches. And I like the name of this Catholic chapel:






It seemed like a lot of the people who were biking by or who were in these cute little carts were Chinese, like this group:




Butter noticed this beautiful tree, whose branches seemed almost naturally shaded and outlined:





I really couldn't see clearly if it was the tree itself, or just the way the light was hitting it.