updates connected to the book Idylls for a Bare Stage
& to performances of the Idylls
& other initiatives related to the Art of the Poetic Monologue
2011-2016

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

"Dramatic Recitation" and the Idylls form

This Friday, the collaborative and juxtaposing Murder on the Bare Stage (subject of my entry earlier this month) - in addition to providing chills and thrills, entertainment and suspense, for the weekend before Halloween - has the capability to demonstrate, highlight, and edge defining contours to the Idylls form, through comparison of similar and complementary approaches.

The show is a collaboration with actor Stephen Mead (profiled elsewhere on this blog), combining his specialty in "Dramatic Recitation" of Victorian-era authors - here, violent nerve-wracking scenes from Poe and Dickens and more - with three of my idylls relevant to the overall theme of murder.

Both approaches - "Dramatic Recitation" and the Idyll form - conceive of the verbal element as essential to what live theater still has to offer uniquely, the tingly pleasure of hearing words well-spoken, fantastically-spoken, virtuosity in the delivery of charged language, towards the release in real-time of the power of words.


Murder on the Bare Stage
8pm Friday, October 26th 

at



3222 11th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20010


And yet, even with emphasis on the verbal as a mutual starting point for the collaboration, there's variety and illuminating contrasts between "dramatic recitation" and the "shared imagining" approach to the Idyll, as between prose and poetry, and indeed, as between storytelling and poet's theater - or a mixture of it all, contrasts, and combinations.

Here's what to expect for Friday's show, contours highlighted by what's place side by side.


 Murder on the Bare Stage

ACT I: Verse and Blood

3 Victorian Era poets
    W.S. Gilbert "Gentle Alice Brown"
    Lewis Carroll "The Walrus and the Carpenter"
    Edward Lear  5 Limericks

Idyll - "An Old Soldier Cleans his Rifle for the Last Time" 
(vide Walt Whitman)  

"The Murder of Nancy" from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.  As adapted for dramatic recitation by Dickens himself, and further adapted by Stephen Mead.
 


ACT II: How Can a Crime Be Concealed?

Idyll - "A Bandit Plots a Murder by the Road"

Macbeth/Lady Macbeth

"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

Idyll - "A Reveler Walks Home to his Family by Moonlight" 


Thursday, October 4, 2012

Murder on the Bare Stage

Announcing a new show - just in time for Halloween - at Bloombars in Columbia Heights

This show combines the "Shared Imagining" approach to the Idyll and the Idyll form with actor Stephen Mead's expertise in dramatic recitation - produced in collaboration with Bloombars


Murder on the Bare Stage

Thrills! Chills! 
perfect for the Halloween Season 

Art of the Poetic Monologue/ A One-Man Show
on the theme of Murder!

A literary-poetic program combining actor Stephen Mead's specialty 
in dramatic recitations of Poe and Dickens with writer Magus Magnus' 
approach to the "Idyll" (poetic monologue designed for performance)
from his book Idylls for a Bare Stage 

Devised by Magus Magnus and Stephen Mead 


8pm, Friday October 26th at Bloombars 




starring Stephen Mead





 Spine-tingling! Enactments of Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart”
and “The Murder of Nancy” from Dickens’ Oliver Twist 
The Mindscape of a killer, and more, from Magus Magnus 
Black Humor and Bloody wit from Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, W.S. Gilbert, and More


Suggested Donation of $10 to support Bloombars and the show


Murder on the Bare Stage is a collaborative production by Bloombars  
and Magus Magnus' SiGiLPAL (Sui Generis Literary Performing Arts Lab)

http://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=c33bd5c9b1&view=att&th=13a23de5c7e163bb&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=f_h7tnilqn1&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P9Rh6sKazvBm2rj1TTc9c2q&sadet=1349385569139&sads=cHa2Ai5LTDKY673c1H0LqEpezVA 

3222 11th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20010

Murder on the Bare Stage
8pm Friday October 26th