Sunday, August 10, 2014

No such thing as free Shakespeare

The Wall Street Journal's Perri Klass offers 'life coach[ing]', without seeing the important lesson in her story;
My mother died several months ago, at 86, and I have been missing her very much. She loved the free Shakespeare in the Park produced by the Public Theater, and she used to get up early and wait in the senior citizens' line for tickets. But I ruled that out in 2010, during the run of Al Pacino in "The Merchant of Venice," after she waited five hours one very hot morning and didn't score.
When I was a child, my parents took me every summer to Shakespeare in the Park, and now it became my responsibility to get my mother in. I entered the online ticket lottery every day and signed up for the special accessible performances, so that last summer my legally blind mother was able to sit through "Love's Labour's Lost" surrounded by the best-behaved group of seeing-eye dogs ever.
Which she could have enjoyed with a ticket purchased at a box office or ticket outlet. With a lot less bother, at a lower true cost. The best things in life aren't free...even when the providers of them are claiming they are.

There's a life lesson worth having.

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