Sam Raimi and Salome walk into a bar...

Once we were divided up we all took a look around the room ⎯ sizing each other up. The men and women we saw we had lived with, dined with, laughed with, struggled with; but now we were pitted against each other ⎯ it was wonderful!

I love how many different ways there are to achieve your objective in this game of Diplomatic Risk. Each team can approach it from so many different angles and theories. On top of it all, since we’ve all gotten to know each other, there’s the added element of reading the person your talking with. However, you don’t know if what they are portraying is their true thoughts or simply a guise.

I think my favorite part of the first day of the game was when Jaime and Kate got into their little scrap. Kate is pursuing a very obvious means of achieving her team’s objective. I’m not sure how it will play out now. Her attempt to get us all to sign treaties may just be a façade but I doubt it. And Jaime is far more incredulous then I. He was ruthless in calling her peacemaking efforts out. I can’t speak more about the game until it’s over for security reasons.

On another note, Salome was amazing. They captured the humor so incredibly well. When Salome was trying to get Johanna to kiss her I was about to roll from my chair. Yet, at the same time, the grotesque tragedy remained at center stage. It reminded me of a Sam Raimi film in some ways. The tension was built up through suspense and use of the taboo until the audience required some sort of catharsis. Then, humor was used to release this tension and keep the audience alert.

The music was also marvelous. I didn’t know that composers were experimenting with Opera in that way at that time. The music was very sophisticated. Instruments were used in very surprising ways to elicit very unique feelings. I personally love the use of the tuba. As the strings were twiddling how some major modal center the tubas would find a very different minor modal center to create a completely different and dissonant layer. That sort of texturing in the music was incredibly impressive.