Popular Entertainment: Carol and I love live theater. We've seen Les Miserables and Phantom multiples times. We have attended theatrical performances in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Phoenix, New York, Mesa, Sacramento, Ashland, Oregon, Cedar City Utah Shakespeare Festival, France and other places. We love the Hale Theater in Gilbert, AZ. It is a small, theater-in-the-round experience that is done very professionally. (Note: I used to love sports and grew up on a baseball diamond and a basketball court. I still love them but I have grown weary of the antics of so many professional athletes to the point that I have largely lost interest in pro sports. Having said that, I know that not all big-time athletes are disreputable. I attend church with two highly successful pro football players and the parents of another Hall of Famer and they are very honorable. But nowadays, as a spectator, I prefer college and high school sports.)

A partial list of live musical or theatrical performances we have enjoyed over the years:

Les Miserables          Phantom of the Opera        Hello Dolly         Damn Yankees

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers          A Christmas Carol    Aida        Cats

Billy Elliot      Annie Get Your Gun      How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying

Guys and Dolls     Porgy and Bess       Fiddler on the Roof     Oliver     The Music Man

The King and I     The Fantastiks        Pirates of Penzance       Brigadoon      Mame

Camelot      Always Patsy       42nd Street       Kiss Me Kate     Grease      Pajama Game

The Mikado     Beauty and the Beast       The Lion King      South Pacific   Wait Until Dark

Oklahoma       Driving Miss Daisy      Showboat      Movin' On     Mama Mia   Evita

Bye Bye Birdie     Carousel       Faust       Big River       Smokey Joe's Cafe       Wicked

Will Rogers Follies   Church Basement Ladies      Man From La Mancha    My Fair Lady

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat     Wait Until Dark    Twelve Angry Men   

Sense and Sensibility      Into the Woods

(Note: We don't follow opera by and large. Carol says she grew up on too much opera and lost a taste for it. That's OK with me. We don't go to movies too often--perhaps 3 times annually. There's too much junk out there. We're not into big action movies and sex soap opera movies. I like watching old Westerns on T.V. occasionally.)

Our Town by Thornton Wilder has always intrigued me, perhaps because I grew up in sort of a Grover Corner type of community portrayed in the play. I used to read the play every few years just to get that special feeling it gave me when considering how the sum total of small acts in daily life are more important that we tend to think.