Excellent Casey! I totally agree with Terry, Mary, and Clayton. Thank you for this incredible summation of your weekend. So thrilled that you were able to attend!
Love, Love, Love,
Joy
Sent from Mail for Windows
From: TERRY GALLOWAY
Sent: Friday, August 19, 2022 10:31 PM
To: Clayton Stromberger
Cc: Casey Caldwell;
Shakespeare at Winedale 1970-2000 alums
Subject: [Winedale-l] Re: James, Laurel, and the Class of 2022 - Wrestling with the Angel
Thank you , Casey. I’m with Clayton. For these last many lovely years the beauty that is Winedale has been the beauty that is James and Laurel.
Terry
Sent from my iPhone
On Aug 19, 2022, at 7:43 PM, Clayton Stromberger <cstromberger@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
I heartily join you…!!! Beautifully said, Casey. Thank you so much for this.
Cheers and cheers,
c
From: Casey Caldwell <w.casey.caldwell@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, August 19, 2022 at 1:35 PM
To: Shakespeare at Winedale 1970-2000 alums <winedale-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: [Winedale-l] James, Laurel, and the Class of 2022 - Wrestling with the AngelHi, all,
I'm sorry I've been so absent from our conversations of late. The pandemic was incredibly challenging for our family and then we've had a bunch of (great) life events, but now I'm here!
I'm writing because I've just returned from the amazing final weekend at Winedale completely inspired again by the play and work that the class shared with us. I was out all day Saturday and Sunday, for Two Noble Kinsmen, Winter's Tale, Much Ado, and then a second helping of Kinsmen. I've been away for a bit and returning for this weekend was such a joy. The student's engaged creatively and earnestly with the cruxes presented by Winter's Tale, the wit and clownery in Much Ado, and the erotic ambiguities and wild riffing on Chaucer in Kinsmen. I was jealous of their ability to energize a matinee audience soaking in that Texas heat, and deeply appreciative of the engaging conversations we shared after their performances. The whole team out at Winedale this summer is truly composed of heroes' heroes.
As many of you know by now, James is facing his own personal battle at Agincourt. Yet it's not merely his own. James is facing this battle with Laurel and the few, the happy few of the Winedale class of 2022. This summer was about Winedale and the experience that the students' were meant to have, and James's challenge was in one sense the same as always: to push and guide them in that process of self-discovery in and through Shakespeare (and Fletcher).
I know that James is fond of challenge roles at Winedale—in my first summer, I rated my musical ability a 0.5 out of 10 in our pre-summer survey of skills and he made me Balthasar in Much Ado (!)—and this summer he himself accepted the absolute challenge role. To continue mixing my metaphors (I blame/thank Shakespeare for the tendency), James elected to wrestle with the angel this summer and, in true Winedale fashion, he's done it as part of an ensemble. Beyond the various physical, mental, and spiritual limits that we push past at Winedale, there is an absolute limit—the limit of limits that marks off life's circumference from whatever is beyond—and I cannot think of a more quintessential expression of how James embodies everything this program means than for him to live at that limit and direct Winedale with passion and ability alongside the students, Laurel, and the rest of the team out there. James wrestles with the angel at Winedale and I can bare witness the immensity and beauty of the contest. To engage in the contest is to already have won. Even in this, James continues to teach me.
Please join me in congratulating James on the amazing play that the Winedale class of 2022 undertook! All my love and admiration, James!
Cheers,
Casey Caldwell (Spring 2003; Summer, 2003, 2004; Summer 2009, 2010;
Reunion 2015)
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