Our Sunday date, a bike play!
Spokesong – a play (showing at the Seattle Public Theater through June 8)
On Sunday Raleighdon & Mimitabby rode their bikes 15.5 miles to get to Green Lake Park where there is an old bath house converted into a theater. We attended the showing of a play called Spokesong! The set is an old bike shop, with a velocipede (and other bikes) hanging from the rafters. The story is set in Belfast, Ireland, a place that has been subject to political unrest for years.
The scenes flip back and forth between the 1970’s and World War I, with the main character, Frank Stock, and his grandfather, his namesake, the founder of the bike shop. The play is filled with old time music. “Bicycle Built for Two” is a main theme, with minstrels playing banjos, guitars, accordions, and other acoustic instruments strolling on and off the stage. The audience had a fair number of cyclists in it, as evidenced by the full bike rack outside; so the display of vintage bikes on the set made the play more fun for us to watch. (We were warned to keep feet and elbows out of the aisles because they were frequently used by actors on bicycles!)
Important issues like women’s suffrage, war and morality were portrayed with bicycles and the parts they played in those times. Inside the theater, we were happy to discover cycling friends were also in attendance.
When it was all over, yes, the guy gets the girl; we left to discover that it was still not raining outside, an important consideration with 15 miles ahead of us. We made our way south, experienced our first “bike box” on Stone way, and met a fellow south end commuter, a young woman on a fixie bike. We were afraid we’d be too hungry if we waited to eat when we got home, so Raleighdon picked out some good snack foods at the Fremont PCC (a cooperative supermarket) filled his panniers with other groceries, and we rode on home. A good time was truly had by all. For those of you who have expressed concern, it does help a little tiny bit to load Raleighdon’s bike down with groceries
