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BlackBeard Pirate Festival

Hampton, VA 

This weekend felt like the kickoff to summer in more ways than one.  Drinks with friends, festivals, and the beach.  What says summer better than that?

I began my research for the next Ammons/Kramarczuk production this weekend at the BlackBeard Pirate Festival in Hampton.  Crowds of skimpy clothing, wooden swords, creative tattoos, and cannon fire.  Children with tankards, resembling drunken mini-pirates.  Teenagers flashing midriffs and abandoned legs of meat cast down beside the trash bins.  Muddy tent grounds and paid actors singing about their first love, the wide, open sea.  A clearly green, red- head telling me about the many parts of the remodeled Kalmar Nyckel.  The urge to get a tarot card reading, but knowing I could not partake without my sister to gasp and squeal beside me.  Teapots, pirate booty, and knotted cravats.  A smorgasbord of pirate that helped me envision a cast of middle-schoolers jauntily leaping across the stage.  Wondering if I could push the envelope and allow K to cast a "drunken" pirate.  Or, maybe, he'll just be the "happy, yet dumb" one I suggest.  

Please, Oh Mighty Dionysus, allow me to burn my creative candle this summer and write this show before the school year begins anew.  I promise to save my draft continually, and will not fall prey to thoughts of self-doubt and my good friend, Procrastination.  Amen.