Category: Events

A little more Shakespeare in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Seanchai Library

It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.

A Midsummer’s Night Dream Events

One of William Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a four-stranded play set within a forest inhabited by the fairy folk under the rule of Titania and Oberon. There is the over-arching theme of the forthcoming wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and Hippolyta, the Amazon queen, due to take place within the forest. This is to be in part celebrated by a group of six amateur actors staging a play, and who have also come to the forest to prepare. Then there are the four young Athenians who are to be among the guests at the wedding: Hermia, is in love with Lysander, but has been order by Egeus, her face to wed Demetrius, who is deeply loved by Helena, Hermia’s best friend – but whom he dumped to be free to wed Hermia.

Within the forest, Oberon and Titania are somewhat estranged over Titania’s refusal to accede to Oberon’s demand to hand him her Indian changeling. Angered by her actions, Oberon summon Robin “Puck” Goodfellow, his “shrewd and knavish sprite”, with the intent of putting into motion a plan to shame Titania into doing as he wishes through the use of a magical potion. However, as the plot is put into motion, Oberon witnesses assorted actions: the cruel words of Demetrius to Helena, the assery (a deliberately chosen term in the circumstances 🙂 ) of Nick Bottom, one of the amateur players, and the plot inevitably thickens – helped in no small part by a slight case of mistaken identities, until the fairies are forced to convince those with whom they have interacted have just experienced a dream – and Puck suggests that the dream might even extend to the audience.

Seanchai Library continue to celebrate this popular comedy throughout the week with a series of special events:

Saturday, June 22nd, 19:00 The Listening Picnic

Grab a “sammich” and the hand of a friend, and come hang out in Ceilliuradh Glen to celebrate the beginning of summer with a dream or two! Broadcast will be on Stream.

Tuesday, June 25th, 19:00: Making Scenes at A Midsummer’s Night Dream

With Kayden Oconnell and friends at the A Midsummer’s Night Dream installation on LEA 2.

 

A Midsummer’s Night Dream, LEA 2

Wednesday, June 26th, 19:00: A Midsummer’s Night Dream – The Whole Story

With Shandon Loring at the A Midsummer’s Night Dream installation on LEA 2.

The Rest Of The Week at Seanchai Library

Sunday, June 23rd, 18:00: James and the Giant Peach

Caledonia Skytower reads Roald Dahl’s classic at the Magicland Golden Horseshoe.

Monday, June 24th 19:00: Incident at Hawk’s Hill

Gyro Muggins reads naturalist and historian Allan W. Eckert’s popular novel.

In 1870, Manitoba became the fifth province of the (then) three-year-old Canadian Confederation. Over the previous 18 months, it had seen strife and rebellion, but for William MacDonald, his wife, Esther, and their family, the lands around what would eventually become the city of Winnipeg, are ideal for farming, and so they have settled and built Hawk’s Hill.

The open spaces are perfect for the MacDonald’s four children – or should have been; while the three elder children thrived, the youngest, six-year-old Ben, became increasingly introverted.

Small for his age, Ben was reserved and prefers being with animals, learning to imitate the sounds of many, and well as copying their movements and actions. In return, the local animals seem to respond well to him – although members of his family and the other locals consider him odd.

But then came the day when Ben, in seeking new animals to mimic, wandered further than was usual, venturing into unfamiliar territory – only to become hopelessly lost. When a storm breaks, he has no option but to hide in a badger hole – an occupied badger hole. And thus begins a relationship spanning several months between young boy and a female badger, to the benefit and comfort of both.

Thursday, June 27th

  • 19:00: Monsters and Myths: Shandon Loring continues Bernard Evslin’s words on Hecate, variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, light, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, ghosts, necromancy, and sorcery.
  • 21:00: Seanchai Late Night: contemporary fantasy and science fiction with Finn Zeddmore.

SL16B and marketing Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
For existing users, SL16B is part of the scrolling banner of images featured on the secondlife.com log-in page. It marks one small part of marketing work around the birthday celebrations

The celebrations for Second Life’s 16 birthday commenced on Thursday, June 20th at 10:00 SLT, and will run through until July 8th. It is a time of a lot of in-world events marking Second Life’s “birthday” – and it’s also an opportunity for Linden Lab to remind the world just how long-lived, – and potentially relevant – the platform is.

This outreach can take various forms. It can, for example encompass direct outreach to the media at large, as we’ve seen with SL’s 10th and 15th years, with media interviews with the CEO, press releases and the release of materials such as infographics offering snapshots of Second Life in facts and figures.

For 2019 the Lab has already produced a special Second Life landing page for SL16B. Landing pages are those seen by people attracted to Second Life via adverts and marketing campaigns, and I’ve covered how these pages work in my 2015 piece Landing Pages: marketing Second Life. However, given it is available, I took the opportunity to contact the Lab’s Marketing Manager for Second Life, Brett Linden about what else the marketing team are working on to promote Second Life during its 16th anniversary, and he was only too happy to talk me through some of the work.

The entire marketing team has been working to promote SL16B through multiple channels, including organic, paid, email and social campaigns. Most of our energies on SL16B have been on re-engagement of existing or lapsed Second Life Residents but we do hope that the event will draw the interest of outward (non-SL) media, as well.

Our Senior Marketing Manager Darcy has been promoting via paid display and search ads, most of which are being primarily used for [this] “re-targeting” [of] existing Second Life Residents to encourage (and/or remind) them to log back in. The landing page is referenced in some of the paid campaigns that link directly to it, [some of which] include 15 second and 30 second edits of our main SL16 “first look” promo video.

– Brett Linden describing the marketing work around SL’s 16th anniversary

While it may sound a little odd trying to market Second Life to users who have not logged-in to it for a while – after all, if they’ve not logged-in, then surely because they’re no longer interested? – it does actually make a lot of sense. There are many potential reasons why people might take a break from logging-in to the platform or who opt to put it to one side with the intention of coming back – but never quite get around to it. Thus, reaching out to “lapsed” users can be beneficial.

Certainly, it’s an approach that has yielded worthwhile results for the Lab, hence why it continues to be a staple part of their marketing efforts. If nothing else, re-capturing the interest of those who were once engaged in the platform is potentially a lot easier than trying to draw in an entirely new audience (not that this shouldn’t also be done / isn’t done).

Some of the paid advertising and search ads Darcy Linden has been working on in the run-up to SL16B that will be used in marketing campaigns around the birthday celebration

Part of this outreach will be in the form of e-mails. Target groups for these e-mail are being identified by one of the Lab’s marketing analysts, Maveric Linden, and e-mails will start going out during the week commencing Monday, June 24th. Part of this campaign will encompass active Second Life users as well, in the form of one e-mail promoting activities at SL16B, and another promoting the new Premium Gift released for SL16B (a retro ’50s diner already available through the Premium gift kiosks).

Social media plays an important role in marketing, both for SL16B and in general. In this the reach of a message can be greatly amplified through the likes of Twitter re-tweets, both by Second Life users and others.

Lead Community Manager Xiola has been leading the charge with promotion across all our social channels including working with the community to help spread awareness. It was exciting to see that founder Philip Rosedale tweet the video, but we’ve also had dedicated outreach to many Second Life vloggers and bloggers, such as yourself that allowed many influencers to get an advanced sneak peek to prepare their coverage for opening day.

– Brett Linden describing the way social media can help amplify a message

Of course, reaching out to vloggers and bloggers engaged in SL (you can catch my pocket guide to SL16B if you haven’t already) is to be expected. But what about more outward (non-SL related) marketing? Brett acknowledges that SL16B doesn’t specifically have a direct focus here, but that doesn’t mean the more mainstream media is being ignored.

We are engaged in ongoing efforts for outward press opportunities covering multiple other angles including reminding the media about our pioneering role in the mainstreaming of virtual worlds, virtual currencies/economies and VR. One of the things that we’ve noticed some recent media traction on is the “Love Made in Second Life” mini-series and some of the other non-romance ethnographic videos featured on our social channels.

For example, we already have a major cable news network and an established podcast creator working on extended pieces inspired by some of those videos. We’ve been very happy with the attention received by our “Made in Second Life” series and the recent Destinations videos since they serve the dual purpose of showcasing SL and surfacing great stories to both the existing community and external audiences.

A practical demonstration of this broader engagement with the media actually came as this article was being finalised, in the form of How Virtual Reality Is Changing Healthcare, a techopedia article by Terri Williams, which includes comments by the Lab’s CEO, Ebbe Altberg, directly referencing Second Life’s relevance to healthcare.

Marketing is a complex topic, but it is one in which LL are constantly engaged, even if we may not always see what is going on or the results – or even see it in the form of press interviews or similar. As such, I found it interesting to hear from Brett on just one aspect of the work; and I hope this article helps shed some light on work we, as users, don’t often get to see.

My thanks to Brett Linden for his time in allowing me to write this piece.

SL16B: your pocket guide to the celebrations

Posted on by Inara Pey
Courtesy of Linden Lab

The SL16B celebratory regions have opened their doors to mark the 16th anniversary of the public launch of Second Life. As with previous years, the event includes music, entertainment, talks, presentations, performances and the opportunity to explore themed builds and exhibitions by participating members of the Second Life community.

This year marks something of a departure from recent SLB events, in that for the first time since SL9B, these celebrations have been under the direct management of the Lab and the Linden Department of Public Works (LPDW), rather than being community-led. The most notable aspects of this change are that this year, the celebration doesn’t feature things like the familiar 4-region Birthday Cake stage – in fact there are only two official stages: the Main Stage and the DJ Stage.

The SL16B Main Stage as seen from the beach at the lake

The second notable aspect is that the exhibitor spaces are considerably fewer this year than in previous years, and these are located in the five regions on the west side of the SL16B estate, being: SL16B Astonish, SL16B Captivate, SL16B Enchant, SL16B Incredible, and SL16B Sparkle. Each of these is marked by a large central exhibitor display with a landing point associated with it, with smaller parcels laid out around it in a grid pattern of roads (traversed by the familiar pod tours) and footpaths.

The rest of the celebratory regions are given over to public spaces, the stages, the auditorium, a large central lake and beach, and a couple of Linden Homes preview regions, of which more anon.

This year’s SL16B regions include many open spaces that offer room to breathe whilst visiting

The theme for this year’s celebrations is “Sweet Sixteen”, with a focus on a 1950’s, the start of the “youth revolution” and a general period of social change in America that continued through the 1960s.   Given this, there are the inevitable core elements of diners, drive-in movie theatres, bright colours, vinyl and 50s B-movies and typically 50’s views of “the future” that involve rocket ships and the like to be found throughout the exhibitor displays, but there are also those that put the 50s into context as informative pieces, and those that cast their net a little wider.

In this latter regard, I admit to particular liking the International Space Museum / National Space Society’s central display that celebrates our once and future presence on the Moon. Yes, we didn’t reach the Moon’s surface until 1969, but NASA was a child of the 1950s (officially formed in 1958), and July 2019 does mark the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic landing.

Part of the ISM / NSS exhibitor display Back to the Moon!, marking the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11

The community spaces offer attractions of their own: the lake and beach noted above, meandering parks, and spaces that can help take the load when dealing with large numbers of avatars bunching together in the core events areas. And here I might sound a little critical, but having become used to fantastical builds for the various stages and event centres over the last seven years in particular, the core builds – stages and auditorium – for Sl16B come across as – well – a touch bland.

Yes, I can understand the reasoning; some of the more fantastic builds seen in the past were doubtless resource heavy for both servers (with a scripting load) and – more particularly – viewers (lots of mesh and textures, for example, clogging up local computer resources). The builds here are a lot more economical in these respect; but while they do reflect the teens / 50s theme, they do seem to lack the attractive lustre and thrill of previous community designs.

Events and Activities

But in terms of major events, what does SL16B hold? Well, the best way the stay abreast of all that’s going on is via the official calendar of events, which I’ve embedded below.

However, there are a couple of significant events taking place which you might want easier reminding about – the weekday Meet the Lindens sessions, and the SL16B Music Fest, so I’m including a few notes on them here.

Meet the Lindens

Now a staple of SLB activities, Meet the Lindens features the opportunity to listen to and ask questions of, employees of Linden Lab at 14:00 SLT, Monday 24th June through Friday, 28th June at the SL16B Auditorium.

You can find out more about who is taking part this year in my blog post, SL16B: Meet the Lindens – when and who, however, the schedule for the sessions is given below for ease of reference.

Day (14:00 – 15:00 SLT) Lindens
Monday 24th June Patch Linden, Senior Director, Product Operations
Tuesday 25th June
Oz Linden, Senior Director, Second Life Engineering and April Linden, Systems Engineering Manager, Operations
Wednesday 26th, June Ebbe Linden (Altberg), Linden Lab CEO
Thursday 27th June Xiola Linden, Lead Community Manager, and Strawberry Linden, Marketing Specialist
Friday 28th June Meet the Moles – the Linden Department of Public Works

 

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SL16B Music Fest

The SL16B Music Fest will take place on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st June, at the Main Stage at SL16B. Again, for ease of reference, the line-up of live performers is given below.

Time Friday, June 21st
 Saturday, June 22nd
10:00 Parker Static Dreama Summerwind
11:00 R4 Anne (oXoRyanneoXo) Mimi Carpenter
12:00 noon Tempio Breil Grif Bamaisin
13:00 Gabriel da Silva Donn DeVore
14:00 Alazarin Mobius Skye Galaxy
15:00 Evely Lane Effinjay
16:00 Zak Claxton Quartz

Other Points of Interest

The Welcome Area

The best place to start your visit, the Welcome Area features:

  • A click-to-teleport map of the celebration regions that will deliver you to a destination (or the closest landing point to it).
  • Free gifts and free 1950s-style avatars to help you fit the mood of the celebrations (and potentially reduce your rendering impact on others visiting the regions, should you choose to use them).
  • The Swaginator HUD for the SL16B gift hunt.
The Welcome Area, on the east side of the SL16B regions is a good place to start exploring – there’s a click-to-TP map, and various freebies (including 1950s style male and female avatars) and the SL16B hunt swaginator HUD

The Tapestry of Time

An anniversary celebration is something the evokes memories and gives us cause to look back, and SL16B is no exception. Building on an event from 2018, this year’s celebrations include an expanded Tapestry of Time, a full region devoted to providing in words and video, the chance to look through SL’s long history from 2003 through to the present day. True, not everything has been recorded, but there’s enough within the region for the historically minded to find of interest.

The Tapestry of Time

Linden Homes Preview Regions

There are two Linden Homes preview regions.

  • The first  – SL16B Stunning – presents the current crop of Traditional land-based homes, and the existing Houseboat type of home that can been found on Bellisseria, the Linden Homes continent.
  • The second – SL16B Spellbound – presents the upcoming trailer-style homes that will form (a part of?) an upcoming new Linden Homes release.
The four new styles of trailer / caravan based Linden Home that will be coming up soon and can be seen at SL16B

The Linden Trailer Homes are liable to be gaining a lot of preview coverage, and they are certainly an interesting idea. However, the preview comes with an important note from the Lab:

Please keep in mind this region is just a PEEK at content that is still in progress. The final live regions will be somewhat different and will have some variety built into them just like the previous themes do, but this gives a taste of what is coming.

Patch Linden will have more to say on these units during his Meet the Linden presentation on Monday, June 24th. Following his session, I’ll have a more in-depth look at these new trailer homes including comments from Patch.

SL16B Shopping Event

While not a part of the SL16B regions per se, don’t forget that running from June 20th through until July 8th, 2019 is the SL16B Shopping & Gift Event. This can be found in the familiar Second Life shopping event mall, covering 15 regions (five for shopping) and decorated in the SL16B colours. See SLurls and Links below for the region SLurls

The SL16B Shopping and Gift Event – June 20th through July 8th. See the links below for SLurls

SLurls and Links

SLurls

Core SLurls Exhibitor SLurls
 Shopping Surls
SL16B Welcome Area SL16B Astonish Aurelian
Tapestry of Time SL16B Captivate Gilded
SL16B Auditorium SL16B Enchant Golden
SL16B Main Stage SL16B Incredible Halcyon
SL16B DJ Stage SL16B Sparkle Tinseled
Linden Homes Preview 1
Linden Homes Preview 2

General Links

SL16B Music Fest: performers and schedule

Posted on by Inara Pey
The SL16B performance stage, venue for the Music Fest

On Monday, June 17th, 2019, Linden Lab announced the line-up of performers and the schedule for the SL16B music festival.

The Music Fest has been a part of the Second Life Birthday celebrations since SL12B in 2015. This year, the event will take place over the two days of Friday, June 21st and Saturday, June 22nd, on the performance stage in the SL16B region.

The event schedule is as follows:

Time Friday, June 21st
 Saturday, June 22nd
10:00 Parker Static Dreama Summerwind
11:00 R4 Anne (oXoRyanneoXo) Mimi Carpenter
12:00 noon Tempio Breil Grif Bamaisin
13:00 Gabriel da Silva Donn DeVore
14:00 Alazarin Mobius Skye Galaxy
15:00 Evely Lane Effinjay
16:00 Zak Claxton Quartz

Note the SLurl given in this piece will not be available for general use until SL16B opens.

SL16B: Meet the Lindens – when and who

Posted on by Inara Pey
Courtesy of Linden Lab

The 16th anniversary of Second Life’s opening to the public at large – SL16B – is just around the corner (starting June 20th). And, as has been the case with SLB events over the last few years, the celebration will feature a series of Meet the Lindens sessions featuring members of the various teams within the Lab who work on Second Life.

The sessions will run daily through the week of the SL16B celebrations, and will be hosted at the SL16B Auditorium. They offer an opportunity to hear from – and likely ask questions of – Linden Lab staff who work on the platform.

All of the sessions will take place between 14:00 and 15:00 SLT, Monday, June 24th and Thursday, June 27th, with the schedule lining up as follows.

Day (14:00 – 15:00 SLT) Lindens
Monday 24th June Patch Linden, Senior Manager, Product Operations
Tuesday 25th June Oz Linden, Technical Director for Second Life and April Linden, Second Life Operations Manager
Wednesday 26th, June Ebbe Linden (Altberg), Linden Lab CEO
Thursday 27th June Xiola Linden, Lead Community Manager, and Strawberry Linden

Friday, June 28th will see a (currently unadvertised, as awaiting names) session with some of the Moles.

For those who may be unfamiliar with some of the above names and their areas of expertise:

  • Patch Linden oversees the content development teams, the Mainland Land Team, and the Linden Department of Public Works – LDPW, aka The Moles. As such, he oversees things like the development of the new Linden Homes continent, the Lab’s games and experiences such as Linden Realms and Horizons, and so on. He is also responsible for managing the individual Second Life and Sansar support teams, and the account support team.
  • Oz Linden oversees the engineering side of Second Life – this encompasses viewer development, simulator development and a lot of the back-end services required by SL (e.g. the asset service, the appearance and baking services, etc.). This includes managing the development and implementation of SL projects and features such Bento, Animesh, the Environmental Enhancement Project, Bakes on Mesh, etc. On the simulator side of things, His team works closely with the Operations team.
  • April Linden manages the team responsible for keeping all aspects of Second Life’s infrastructure – servers, network, etc., running. This involves more than just the simulator servers, encompassing as it does core systems such as the log-in services, and the back-end services as well.  This is the time that is directly engaged in handling service outages, protecting SL from things like DDoS attacks. When things do go sideways, April also takes responsibility for informing Second Life users on what happened and why (and LL’s efforts to avoid any future repeat) through her excellent post-mortem blog posts (like this one) which are recommended reading for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of Second Life.
  • Ebbe Linden, as the Lab’s CEO since 2014, really needs no introduction. Open and honest, he has always endeavoured to keep SL residents appraised of business at the Lab  – including Sansar – and on the manage perspective on Second Life. Should anyone want a potted biography on him however, I offer the one I pieced together when he officially joined Linden Lab.
  • Xiola Linden oversees the Second Life community team, which includes Strawberry Linden. Like many at the Lab, both Xiola and Strawberry are “former” residents of Second Life (quotes used as both remain active in-world on their personal accounts outside of their official capacity as Lindens).  Part of the Marketing Team, the community team is responsible for community relations, running the Second Life social media accounts, working on marketing projects, etc.

As with previous years, I will hopefully be recording each of the sessions, and will be producing a series of audio reports for each. These will comprise bullet-point summaries of the topics covered (I regret to say that producing full written transcripts of every session is too time-intensive for me to commit to), with accompanying audio, as well as links to the official video of each session.

Again, all these sessions will take place at the SL16B Auditorium – but please note that this SLurl will not work until SL16B officially opens.

Catch the SL16B page in the Destination Guide for more information on events and activities during the celebrations.

Shakespeare, boys and badgers, and lunar tourists

Posted on by Inara Pey
Seanchai Library

It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.

Sunday, June 16th, 13:00 A Midsummer’s Night Dream

Selected scenes presented live from the current A Midsummer Night’s Dream Project.

One of William Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a four-stranded play set within a forest inhabited by the fairy folk under the rule of Titania and Oberon. There is the over-arching theme of the forthcoming wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and Hippolyta, the Amazon queen, due to take place within the forest. This is to be in part celebrated by a group of six amateur actors staging a play, and who have also come to the forest to prepare. Then there are the four young Athenians who are to be among the guests at the wedding: Hermia, is in love with Lysander, but has been order by Egeus, her face to wed Demetrius, who is deeply loved by Helena, Hermia’s best friend – but whom he dumped to be free to wed Hermia.

Within the forest, Oberon and Titania are somewhat estranged over Titania’s refusal to accede to Oberon’s demand to hand him her Indian changeling. Angered by her actions, Oberon summon Robin “Puck” Goodfellow, his “shrewd and knavish sprite”, with the intent of putting into motion a plan to shame Titania into doing as he wishes through the use of a magical potion. However, as the plot is put into motion, Oberon witnesses assorted actions: the cruel words of Demetrius to Helena, the assery (a deliberately chosen term in the circumstances 🙂 ) of Nick Bottom, one of the amateur players, and the plot inevitably thickens – helped in no small part by a slight case of mistaken identities, until the fairies are forced to convince those with whom they have interacted have just experienced a dream – and Puck suggests that the dream might even extend to the audience.

A Midsummer’s Night Dream, LEA 2

Hosted by Elrik Merlin and Caledonia Skytower, with performances organised by Kayden Oconnell, the cast comprises Caledonia, Kayden, Da5id Abbot, Fayleen Belois, Ian Quintessa, and Aoife Lorefield, the project’s creator, who will also be interviewed after the performances.

If you cannot attend the event, then why not listen wherever you are, in-world or out, by tuning into fantasy.radioriel.org.

Monday, June 17th 19:00: Incident at Hawk’s Hill

Gyro Muggins reads naturalist and historian Allan W. Eckert’s popular novel.

In 1870, Manitoba became the fifth province of the (then) three-year-old Canadian Confederation. Over the previous 18 months, it had seen strife and rebellion, but for William MacDonald, his wife, Esther, and their family, the lands around what would eventually become the city of Winnipeg, are ideal for farming, and so they have settled and built Hawk’s Hill.

The open spaces are perfect for the MacDonald’s four children – or should have been; while the three elder children thrived, the youngest, six-year-old Ben, became increasingly introverted.

Small for his age, Ben was reserved and prefers being with animals, learning to imitate the sounds of many, and well as copying their movements and actions. In return, the local animals seem to respond well to him – although members of his family and the other locals consider him odd.

But then came the day when Ben, in seeking new animals to mimic, wandered further than was usual, venturing into unfamiliar territory – only to become hopelessly lost. When a storm breaks, he has no option but to hide in a badger hole – an occupied badger hole. And thus begins a relationship spanning several months between young boy and a female badger, to the benefit and comfort of both.

Tuesday, June 18th 19:00: The Penderwicks in Spring

Springtime is finally arriving on Gardam Street, and there are surprises in store for each member of the family. Some surprises are just wonderful, like neighbour Nick Geiger coming home from war. And some are ridiculous, like Batty’s new dog-walking business. Batty is saving up her dog-walking money for an extra-special surprise for her family, which she plans to present on her upcoming birthday. But when some unwelcome surprises make themselves known, the best-laid plans fall apart.

Filled with all the heart, hilarity, and charm that has come to define this beloved clan, The Penderwicks in Spring is about fun and family and friends (and dogs), and what happens when you bring what’s hidden into the bright light of the spring sun.

With Caledonia Skytower.

Wednesday, June 19th 19:00: The Menace from Earth

Young love is often hard on those experiencing it for the first time.

Take 15-year-old Holly, for example. A lunar colonist and aspiring starship designer, who has something of a crush on her closest male friend, Jeff, with whom she shares a particular passion: that of flying.

It’s a popular pastime on the Moon, thanks in part to the 1/6 gravity environment. Taking advantage of this in caverns within the cities where the air pressure can be kept high enough, locals can strap on sets of wings and take to the air. And Holly and Jeff are both fans of the activity.

Another element to life on the Moon is that of tourism: playing host to “groundhogs”, as the locals call them, who like to visit the Moon. One such tourist is Ariel, a glamorous woman to whom Holly is assigned to as a guide.

It all goes well to start with – until Holly introduces Ariel to Jeff. To her dismay, Holly find herself facing The Menace From Earth: Jeff is quite smitten with Ariel. As her jealousy grow, so Holly starts to resent Ariel more and more – but what to do?

Things take a sudden turn when Ariel asks to joins Holly and Jeff flying in the local cavern…

With Derry McMahon, Bear Silvershade, and Caledonia Skytower.

Thursday, June 20th 19:00: Monsters and Myths

Shandon Loring re-opens Bernard Evslin’s work of stories featuring the gods, heroes and monsters of Greek mythology, turning to Evslin’s words on Hecate, variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, light, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, ghosts, necromancy, and sorcery.