Imagine You Because

The title is the piece or "poem"

Imagine You Because

Or, alternately

Imagine

You

Because...

Plus:

You, because - Imagine! 

SiGiLPAL logo

Long time in coming, I've had occasion to devise the logo for SiGiLPAL:

Sui Generis Literary and Performing Arts Lab

(Originally, Sui Generis Literary Performing Arts Lab, but I did want to retain a free hand in multiple endeavors both literary- and performance-wise, and breaking out of any genre restrictions suggested by "Literary Performing Arts," much as that's a new genre needing to be defined notwithstanding the sui generis relation of these endeavors to and beyond theater and poets theater and poetics theater).

With SiGiLPAL as a performing arts lab, as mentioned in earlier posts, I continue to transition into a new batch of Idylls, bringing with it new variations on the forms and techniques. At some point, I expect to step up the lab's activities.

Meanwhile, on another front, I put together a Kindle book on the Free Spirit, as current concept and historical heresy, so finalized the sigilization of SiGiLPAL for the logo for the book...  

Here the Sui Generis Literary and Performing Arts Lab functions in its literary experimental capacity, to produce the Kindle incarnation of The Free Spirit.

Please click here to check out The Free Spirit on Kindle

Update: 2014-2015 Links and Highlights

Please note, due to an artistic and exploratory transition I'm undergoing currently with the Idylls, Poets Theater, and Poetics Theatre, I rarely update this blog - as you've surely noticed (last update last summer)! For more frequent updates related to all of my writing, please check out www.magusmagnus.com

& yet, as evidenced by the activity listed below, the march for Poets Theater and Poetics Theatre goes on. Plus, as a crucial component of said transition, I've been working on a new set of Idylls, evolving the form and techniques in mind of what theater and acting can uniquely do, and how perennially vital "the poetic" is to live performance. Idylls stalwart Harlie Sponaugle has been with me all the way, working at the level of the actor's spoken line to construct a first new Idyll, tentatively titled "Can't Let the Crazies Derail Us."

Harlie Sponaugle

Here's what's been happening since last summer, 2014:

An excerpt from my conceptual theater/performance piece
drone: poetic monologue for monotone
(“Cognitive Machine Learning”
& CRS Poems for the People 1 &2)
appeared in Nerve Lantern: Axon of Performance Literature Issue 9

In my last entry dated 2 August 2014, I posted pics from the Nerve Lantern show at Medicine Show Theater in New York, where I performed the same selection. Now you can see the Video of that performance.

In that same post, I gave details on the then upcoming Boog Poets Theater night it was my pleasure to host and curate for the Welcome to Boog City Festival of Poetry, Music, and Theater 2014. Here are the vids from  that event as well:

Part of my ongoing artistic exploration is to continue to try to define the qualities and practice of Poets Theater and Poetics Theatre, the latter understood as a subset of the former - purist definitions don't interest me, but the distinctions can make a difference when it comes to inspiration and creative urgency. Poetics Theatre consciously applies contemporary so-called "innovative" poetics concerns and issues to the interactivity of performance and language, with an affinity for the materiality of words and for the abstraction of "voice" and character. drone, as conceptual theater (as well as being a continuation by other means of the art of the monologue), might fall into this category more than the Idylls do so far, just as conceptual writing takes its place amidst "innovative" poetries for its next degree of abstraction from text.

As an outdoor voice "installation," my collaborative piece, CANAL PARK AMOEBAEAN SINGING, probably falls into the realm of poetics theatre as well; but again, the definitions don't seem to matter as much. Each of my collaborators fall into a different tradition of contemporary poetry. (& I consciously use the word "tradition" even when discussing innovative forms - since styles quickly congeal).

 Performance/Performance curator:  This Place Has a Voice
CANAL PARK AMOEBAEAN SINGING: Are Pastorals Idle in an Age of Corporate-Civic Structured Spaces?
(Magus Magnus voice composition for outdoor speakers)
eckClog 1: Nothing Missing Here But Song                 written and performed with Tony Mancus
eckClog 2: Corydon on the Street Corner                     written and performed with Casey Smith
eckClog 3: Rubber Snake in the Grass                         written and performed with Gowri Koneswaran
Plus, Performative Eater Jon Lee (curated by Magus Magnus)
Canal Park      Canal Park Event Day
Washington, D.C.        September 20, 2014

This piece will be published as chapbook from Furniture Press later this summer, now to be titled  eckClogs.

Meanwhile, I still have the impulse to make the distinction when I describe another poetics theatre piece of mine emerging from immersion in very mainstream poetry and theater conceptions (this experience wasn't even poets theater, but theater theater of old school verse plays):
"Farce Rorschach Illumination"
came out of my being Valentine’s Day Poet in Residence, for "Poets Are Present"
during Shakespeare Theatre Company’s The Metromaniacs
a French farce in verse adapted and translated by David Ives
Lansburgh Theatre
Washington, DC         February 14, 2015

“Farce Rorschach Illumination” appears in the Poets Are Present Anthology
published nicely by Shakespeare Theatre Company; and again, the distinctions fall apart; the piece is experimental poetry in form, yet I consider it - like drone - on a continuum with my Idylls work.

Admittedly, a particular occasion induced me to develop some of these distinctions:

 “8 Phases of Staring at the Sun," performance and presentation
for AWP panel Poetics Theater:a Textual and Theatrical Performance and Discussion
moderated by Kaveh Bassiri, with fellow panelists Rodrigo Toscano, Joyelle McSweeney, and Patrick Durgin
AWP 15 at Minneapolis Convention Center
Minneapolis, Minnesota            April 10, 2015

Plus, please check out
“Type Bleeds Tentacles” a mesostic poem with recording 
at Really System’s Really System Labs
which emerged under the direct influence of
 “Polyphonic readings and harmonic listening of Cage texts”
my 3 hr performance installation in Litmore Library
with Christophe Casamassima and Chris Mason
for States & Drives II: Responses to John Cage
Litmore
Baltimore, Maryland             March 28, 2015

That polyvocalic performance brings us full circle back to eckClogs, for one event to announce here at least (after so many listed after the fact), CANAL PARK AMOEBAEAN SINGING redux for an upcoming Litmore fundraiser, June 13th:

Boog this weekend, Nerve Lantern show 7/19, and Rain Taxi interview up now

This Weekend!: Boog Poets Theater Night
@ Welcome to Boog City Festival of Poetry, Music, and Theater 2014
Sunday, August 3rd                  doors open 5:30pm
Sidewalk Cafe, 94 Avenue A       New York, New York


Boog 2014 program

I've had the pleasure to curate - and will have the pleasure to present tomorrow night - the following works...

Geoffrey Gatza, Duchamp Draws Rrose Selavy

Laynie Browne, Tardigrade Play

Joel Allegretti, Confession?

Carlo Parcelli, The Gospel According to Simon Kananaios: a Meditation on Empire

C. J. Ehrlich, Ask Zsuzsanna: Single Motherhood at 50

7:15p.m. Janis Butler Holm, S_ _ T

7:20 p.m. Ellen Redbird, Seventh Half: an excerpt from Unrequited Symbiosis: a Mitochondrial Mistranslation & Underwater Opera

7:35 p.m. Joyelle McSweeney, excerpts from Dead Youth, or The Leaks

Photos from Nerve Lantern show

here I am, reading drone

& here's an interview on Rain Taxi with poet Jay Besemer
much talk of Idylls and the imaginary in performance
Where the Blur Occurs

Author Website Launch, and Ongoing Idylls

A Shared Imagining has been my chosen venue for announcing events and performances, and for discussing theater, poets theater and poetics theatre (specifically the technique of the Idyll), since the publication of Idylls for a Bare Stage - going on 3 years + now.

Meanwhile, my theatrical work is in context with a broader literary endeavor, and so at last I've launched an online go-to point for me as an author: www.magusmagnus.com

Broader endeavor notwithstanding, this launch coincides with the start of a summer lined up to be predominantly focused on poets theater and performance:

I'll be performing “drone: poetic monologue for monotone" for a Nerve Lantern showcase on Saturday, July 19th at 3pm

That's at Medicine Show Theater
549 West 52nd Street, 3rd Floor
New York, New York

This year I'm curator (and host) of Boog Poets Theater Night
for the 8th Annual Welcome to Boog City Festival of Poetry, Music, and Theater
That's Sunday, August 3rd; doors open 5:30pm
Sidewalk Cafe
94 Avenue A
New York, New York

Then after Labor Day, I'll be curator of performances (and composer of a doc text collage, or chorale, along similar lines as drone, but for four voices)
for This Place Has a Voice
Canal Park Arts Project (director: Bruce McCaig) Event
That's Saturday, September 20th, twilight at Canal Park
202 M Street, SE
Washington, D.C.

Beyond my own work as poet and curator this summer, as a parent I'll be immersed in my son Gryphon's entry into professional theater, featured at age 8 as the only child in DEVIATED THEATRE's "creature," an original dance opera by Kimmie Dobbs Chan and Enoch Chan.

 "creature"
premieres at the Ailey Citigroup Theater on August 8th, 7:30 pm
405 West 55th Street 
New York, NY
&
comes to Dance Place September 27-28
 3225 8th Street NE
Washington D.C.

Yet, with all the indicated external activity, the creative process progresses internally, and somewhat invisibly. I'm in a transitional period with regard to producing showcases and presentations of work connected to the Idylls, and am beginning to develop a batch of new Idylls reflective of what I've learned over these years through rehearsal and performance. This blog has been an outlet for some of the real-time thinking and response to first applications of the theory of the Idyll for acting and theater; and now I'm ready to put such thought and experiences into a next evolution of the form.

I'll continue to update here, mostly for event announcements pertaining to my Idylls and performance work, as well as with any irrepressible musings.

 

Upcoming: Murder at Happenings at the Harman, January 29th, noon

Don't miss

Murder on the Bare Stage!

at Happenings at the Harman
Wednesday, January 29th at noon - Bring your lunch!
hosted by Shakespeare Theatre Company
in the Sidney Harman Hall Forum

Sidney Harman Hall
610 F Street New
Washington D.C. 20004

More Details here:

Murder at Happenings

Information about the show is all over this blog, especially during the months connected to its "Must-See," 5 Star, "Best-of-the-Fringe"- rated run during CapFringe 2013 this past summer.

Please check out collected reviews at the entry dated July 23rd, 2013.
Great praise for star Stephen Mead, as well as for the Idyll form and approach.

Highlights include:
 
"Stephen Mead's name could be on that
shortlist of gifted-at-playing-crazies"

"Brilliant character actor"

 “I experienced the idylls more as music
than as text... In the same way that a great
symphony can conjure a broad range of
emotions and even narrative without the
help of text, the sound was more intoxicating 

 than the meaning of the words”

 “a fantastic opportunity to catch a brilliant
artist in an intimate setting.” 

"Masterful"

 - Ben Cattell Noll

Washington City Paper

 “Dark. Powerful. Mysterious. Magnetic. Suspenseful.”

“avant garde masterpieces in the making 

by poet Magus Magnus”  

  “Stephen Mead presents a truly 

breath-taking and captivating 

performance”  

 “allows one to return the very
heart and essence of theatre.”

  “truly a ‘must-see’”

 -Veronique MacRae
DC Metro Theater Arts

 "Ambitious"

 
“a tight series of works that blend
well together as a whole, while
remaining accessible to the audience.”  

-T. Chase Meacham

DC Theatre Scene

 

Stephen Mead

 

Performance Documentation, second half of 2013

The second half of 2013 brought with it a number of Idylls-related performances, with most of the focus being towards Murder on the Bare Stage at CapFringe and beyond.  Below, you'll find a variety of pics and vids. 

But first, please note the forthcoming Happenings at the Harman performance
Save the Date:  Wednesday, January 29th at noon, 2014
Murder on the Bare Stage

Sidney Harman Hall Forum
610 F. Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20004 

This is an encore performance, in case you missed the show at CapFringe
or during The Day of the Dead weekend in Baltimore and New York
and - it's Free!




Meanwhile, some documentation of the Day of the Dead weekend:
Saturday night in New York     11/2/2013
Here is Stephen Mead doing Murder for "Pop-Up Theater" @ Page 2, thanks to our hosts Tony Torn and Lee Ann Brown.

Stephen Mead

Friday night in Baltimore 11/1/2013
Litmore's Day of the Dead Poets Society Soiree  at the new Litmore Literary Arts Center, thanks to Julie Fisher, Christophe Casamassima, Douglas Mowbray hosts... photos by Douglas Mowbray.

refraction of the imaginative realm captured by Mowbray's camera

Mead's shape-shifting rage

here I am, taking it in

From earlier in the evening, here's the always-daring and hilarious Barbara DeCesare, triumphant 

"Babs" with her play,  The Great Beyond

In early August, in New York, Genna Davidson and I participated
in Boog City 7 Poetry, Music, and Theater Festival, for its Poets Theater Event.
A video of the whole Poets Theater evening, plus Major Matt Mason USA, is here:

 Boog Poets Theater 2013 - Sidewalk Cafe

Genna does the Antigone Idyll about 69 minutes into the video 
Note: I also appear, as an actor in Jesse Glass' play, about 103 minutes into it.


Okay, here's another angle on the Glass play
titled Poetic Fictions: A New Age Dawns At Longshoreman’s Hall, San Francisco, June 11, 1964!  


I'm Lew Welch
and the play exemplifies poets theater as poetics theater - aligned with its mytho-historic content! - in celebration of a quintessentially American breakthrough-moment (and ongoing ontological practice) in contemporary poetry. 

You'll have a chance to hear Adam Tobin as Gary Snyder say, "Well, ever since I realized you don't have to write like an Oxford don to be a poet..."
And I get to say, "This logomorphic resident / Intent on drawing National nourishment from National Buzz," as well as, "Hearse drivers like my hearse poems a lot."







The videos below are from CapFringe, July 2013, in the venue at Caos on F in D.C.
Stephen Mead doing his thing: these are clips from the bandit Idyll and the old soldier Idyll, along with his dramatic recitation of W.S. Gilbert's "Gentle Alice Brown."

Of course, these clips from Murder, and the footage of Genna Davidson's Antigone above, capture neither the intent nor the aimed for effect of the Idyll approach:  to do something only live theater can do these days... deeply connect with the audience, and indeed, create a shared imaginative space with artist and audience together, mind to mind, human to human.  The videos don't record the mental and imaginative layers of performance so central to the concept of the Idyll form. Still, perhaps there's something suggestive here of what goes on within the theatrical "magic circle" of an Idylls performance - and certainly, both with Genna and Stephen, you'll get a sense of their professional polish, their talents, skills, and intensity. 


 Bandit

Gentle Alice Brown

Whitman's Old Soldier



 Don't miss the next - free! - showing of
Murder on the Bare Stage
lunchtime (12 noon) - I mention lunchtime, because you can actually bring your lunch
on Wednesday, January 29th, 2014
Happenings at the Harman
Sidney Harman Hall Forum
610 F. Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20004 

Day of the Dead Weekend: Baltimore and New York

Murder on the Bare Stage starring Stephen Mead will travel for the post-Halloween weekend, two dates in two cities: Baltimore for the Day of the Dead Poets Society Soiree to benefit Litmore, a new literary arts center; and then New York for Pop-Up Theater @ Page 22, hosted by actor and director Tony Torn and poet Lee Ann Brown at their salon in Chelsea.


Baltimore, Friday November 1st, 7pm
Litmore's Day of the Dead Poets Society Soiree
at the new Litmore Literary Arts Center
1702 South Road
Baltimore, Maryland 21209

and

New York, Saturday November 2nd, 8pm
"Pop-Up Theater" @ Page 22
435 West 22nd Street
New York, New York 10011

Both nights we will presenting versions of the show presented at CapFringe 2013:

described by one reviewer as “a return to the very heart and essence of theater,” Murder on the Bare Stage combines writer Magus Magnus’ approach to the Idyll(theater of imagination) with actor Stephen Mead’s steampunk, daringly retro style of Victorian-era dramatic recitation for a scary, suspenseful entry into new and classic works exploring the mindscape of violent crime.
            
DC Metro Theater Arts rated the show “Must-See,” 5 Stars, and “Best of the Fringe” during its popular CapFringe 2013 run, and Washington City Paper declared star Stephen Mead’s performance “masterful.”

Please see this blog's summer archives for complete reviews.

for Baltimore: 

Join the Litmore Facebook event

LitMore's Day of the Dead Poets Society Soiree  

for New York:

Check out the Page 22 website

Page 22 Halloween special

Join the Page 22 Facebook event

Pop Up Theater @ Page 22: Halloween Special Event! MURDER ON THE BARE STAGE  

 Hope to see you here or there!

Fall Events

Stephen Mead will appear at the Barracks Row Fall Festival on Capitol Hill this Saturday, 2:30 pm.
He will perform my Idyll, "A Street-Merchant Imagines His Riches to Come" from Idylls for a Bare Stage. Performances have been arranged by Hannah Hessel who runs Happenings at the Harman as audience enrichment manager for Shakespeare Theatre Company. STC has administrative offices and rehearsal spaces on Barracks Row - Stephen will conjure up the runaway fantasies of an Arabian Nights street-merchant in one of the rehearsal halls for this festival. This event is in conjunction with Arts on the Hill.

Barracks Row Fall Festival

I won't be there - about to hit the road for a 12 city/14 day reading tour with Furniture Press Books, publisher of my Heraclitean Pride (2010) and The Re-echoes (2012). 

Then Mead and I will prep for a traveling Murder on the Bare Stage weekend just after Halloween.  Friday night, November 1st in Baltimore, the 1 hr version we did for CapFringe will be part of "LitMore's Day of the Dead Poets Society Soiree" - a fundraising gala for a new writers' center in Baltimore.  Then the next day we're heading up to New York to do it again for hosts Tony Torn and Lee Ann Brown at their salon in Chelsea.  Details to come!

Meanwhile, the Furniture Press Books tour won't be glamorous (going by rental van, much couch surfing), but will be fun and grueling - grueling-fun, and endless literary performance / poetic immersions.  Eating, sleeping - nourishing, reposing on - poetry.  With a reading every night, I think for the first time I'll try my hand (& voice) at doing an Idyll myself - just a reading, not the full technique of the Idyll I request/require from actors. Probably the Palamedes...

 That, and I'll grow a beard for the first time.

Here's our itinerary, straight from the Furniture Press website:

3000 Miles. 12 Cities. 14 Days. And a bunch of other interesting numbers.

September 27, 2013

10 P.M.

The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church

131 E 10th St, New York, NY 10003

September 28, 2013

12-7 PM

“100,000 POETS FOR CHANGE”

Highwire Gallery

2040 Frankford Ave.

Philadelphia, PA 19125

September 29, 2013

4-8 P.M.

PRESS > PLAY

Peabody Heights Brewery

401 E 30th St.  Baltimore, MD 21218

September 30, 2013

Salon at Carmel, NY

October 1, 2013

5 PM 

Pace University at Pleasantville

861 Bedford Rd.

Pleasantville, NY 10570

October 2, 2013

8 PM

YES! Reading Series

Albany Center Gallery

39 Columbia Street

Albany, NY 12207

October 3, 2013

7 PM

Tully House

601 Tully Street

Syracuse, New York 13204

October 4, 2013

7 PM

Rust Belt Books

202 Allen St 

Buffalo, NY 14201

October 5, 2013

7-9 PM

Annabell’s Bar & Lounge

782 W Market St

Akron, OH 44303

October 6, 2013

7 PM

Spudnik Press Cooperative
1821 W Hubbard, Suite 302
Chicago, IL 60622

October 7, 2013

7 PM

microlights

2541 Bremen St

Milwaukee, WI

October 8, 2013

6:00 PM

Prairie Lights Bookstore

15 South Dubuque St.

Iowa City, IA 52240

From Fringe to Boog

Last Saturday Murder on the Bare Stage had its final performance for CapFringe, and this evening I'm getting ready to head up to New York with Genna Davidson for the Boog Poets Theater event tomorrow evening, part of Boog City 7 Poetry, Music, and Theater Festival. Genna will do the Antigone Idyll.

Genna Davidson

During the Fringe, before our second Murder show on Wednesday, July 17th, Genna gamely performed "Antigone Buries her Brother's Body Against Orders of the King" guerrilla-style, around the corner from Fort Fringe and all the goings-on under the Baldacchino Gypsy Tent.  On 6th street, in a driveway just above New York Avenue, in front of a green door with a graffiti helicopter on it, she "held high the urn of finely-wrought bronze" and invoked the Goddess Justice amidst the thick atmosphere of teeming, steaming D.C. streets and sidewalks, connected in point and line to the Capitol Dome and government monuments, presences as vaporous as mirage. At least tomorrow night, in the East Village's Sidewalk Cafe, she won't have to contend with the noise of traffic, although it's likely we'll be facing a rowdy Boog crowd.

Incidentally, on the lineup for the evening, I've been called on to play Lew Welch, on book, in Jesse Glass' Poets Theater piece "Poetic Fictions: A New Age Dawns At Longshoreman's Hall, San Francisco, June 11, 1964!" along with other poets playing poets Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. We're to sit around a table talk-show style, with moderator (also played by a poet), and
SCRATCH
THE TRUE FACE OF A MOTH
INTO A BLACK SURFACE
W/A PIN

THE LINES GLOW & CONNECT
THE LINES GLOW & CONNECT
THE LINES GLOW & CONNECT

until "the water jug is way past empty."
 
[as quoted from the Glass piece]


Here's a link to a notice and schedule of the festival as a whole

Boog City 2013

And Poets Theater Night begins at 5:30 pm, Sunday August 4th (tomorrow)

Sidewalk Cafe

94 Avenue A
New York, New York 10009

3 More CapFringe performances, collected reviews

It's the last week of the 2013 Capital Fringe Festival, and we've had quite a run, fun and instructive, with gratifying audience responses, good energies from the crowds, a sold-out show last Saturday, and rave reviews.

Luckily, I continue to follow Heraclitus in expecting the unexpected, so I'm ready to accept such happy surprises for this offbeat collaborative mix of my approach to the Idyll form as a technique for acting and theater and Stephen Mead's steampunk, daringly retro style of Victorian era dramatic recitation.

I'm posting two of the reviews in full here, because they do reflect the original intentions of the show, and give words other than my own to so much of what has been communicated on this blog.

We went into last weekend with a great review from Ben Catell Noll at Washington City Paper.

Murder Hip Shot City Paper

Hip Shot: Murder on a Bare Stage

Posted by Ben Cattell Noll on Jul. 19, 2013 at 5:30 pm

Caos on F
Remaining Performances:
Saturday, July 20, 2:30 p.m.
Sunday, July 21, 8:45 p.m.
Wednesday, July 24, 10:15 p.m.
Thursday, July 25, 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 27, 8:00 p.m.
They Say: "Nail-biting and nerve-wracking. Actor Stephen Mead (London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art-trained) combines his specialty in dramatic recitations of Poe and Dickens with poet Magus Magnus’s approach to theatre of the imagination, for classic and avant-garde thrills and chills."
Ben's Take:
"Brilliant character actor" can sometimes feel like a backhanded compliment. It suggests that while I thought your performance was great, I'd never accept you as Hamlet.  When given a chance to do bat-shit crazy, though, there are a few performers—Willem Dafoe, Tim Curry, and the inestimable Christopher Walken- who consistently knock it out of the park in a way that the Brad Pitts and George Clooneys of the world never could.  Watching Murder on a Bare Stage, I get the sense that Stephen Mead's name could be on that shortlist of gifted-at-playing-crazies, had he not forsook the world of spectacle and mass consumption for a stripped-down, poetic approach to live theater.
Mead quite literally bursts onto stage with one such role in the idyll "A Bandit Plots a Murder by the Road."  All raspy whisper, harsh consonants, and bulging neck veins, he curses the sky and plots revenge creating a sinister character that transports viewers off the eponymous bare stage and onto the moonlit streetscape.  Sans props, lighting cues, or sound effects, Mead aims to facilitate the audience in a "shared imagining" that fills in the gaps.  It's a lot to ask from one man's body and voice, but he more than meets the challenge.
The show is a collaboration between Mead and local author Magus Magnus.  Magnus specializes in the idyll form, which I knew nothing about coming into the show but which was helpfully explained in detail in thoughtful program notes.  Essentially, it is a type of poetry written to be spoken rather than read and relies on the audience to use their imagination to provide the details typically shown through props or costumes to more fully immerse them in the thoughts and world of the character.
I experienced the idylls more as music than as text.  If not for the extremely descriptive titles Magnus lends to his work I might be hard-pressed to recount specific details of some of the scenes, but they are hardly the point.  In the same way that a great symphony can conjure a broad range of emotions and even narrative without the help of text, the sound was more intoxicating than the meaning of the words. Magnus has chosen a master literary musician as his collaborator who brings out the best in his work.
The most concrete piece of the evening, however, is also its most masterful. Mead's professional specialty is in recreating "dramatic recitation" performances popular during the Victorian era, similar to a live version of a 1940's radio program or an audio book we might listen to today.  A primary focus is on the work of Charles Dickens, and the evening I saw the show he performed a selection from Oliver Twist (note: Mead alternates this centerpiece performance with a recitation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart."  If you want to see him do Dickens, go on July 21 or 25.  For Poe, catch the show on the 20th, 24th, or 27th).
There's plenty of the same demented rasp and frenzied shouting done so well in the opening piece throughout the Twist performance, and if that's all Mead could channel it would make for a satisfying-enough evening.  But the piece demands that Mead portray a diversity of characters, including a damsel in distress, which he differentiates splendidly and transitions into and out of on a dime.  Especially worth noting is Mead's command of volume dynamics, building from a barely audible whisper to an ear-splitting climax.
As for that Hamlet comment?  Mead makes a case that he is leading man material as well, presenting an excellent rendition of a selection from the leading man of another of Shakespeare's tragedies—the one actors refer to in hushed tones as "The Scottish Play."
Murder on the Bare Stage is a very satisfying evening of theater and a fantastic opportunity to catch a brilliant artist in an intimate setting.
See It If: You've ever felt like props or lights have gotten in the way of your enjoyment of the performer and the text.
Skip It If: You prefer the films of Michael Bay to those of Michael Haneke.


And here's the review in full from the DCMTA article from Veronique MacRae last week...

Five Star Murder

Capital Fringe Review: ‘Murder on the Bare Stage’ by Veronique MacRae

Posted on July 14, 2013 by Veronique MacRae

Dark. Powerful. Mysterious. Magnetic. Suspenseful. Stephen Mead presents a truly breath-taking and captivating performance in Murder on the Bare Stage. With the combination of classic masterpieces by greats such as Edgar Allan Poe, W.S. Gilbert, and William Shakespeare and the avant garde masterpieces in the making by poet Magus Magnus, Mead delivers a solo performance that thrusts the audience into a world of imagination and creativity that allows one to return the very heart and essence of theatre.


Without spectacle or set, Mead turns the bare stage into the various settings that allow the mind to submit itself to the world of the works delivered in pieces such as Magnus’ A Bandit Plots a Murder by the Road and Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Through a marriage of what Magnus and Mead refer to as the Idyll form and Dramatic Recitation, an evening of live theatre is created that reminds the viewer that in a world focused on large screens and special effects, that the essence of live theatre requires only the authenticity of the performer and the openness of imagination.

Murder on the Bare Stage is truly a ‘Must-See’ for the 2013 Capital Fringe Festival.

Murder on Bare Stage plays through July 27, 2013 at Caos on F – 923 F Street NW in Washington, DC. For performance times and to purchase tickets, visit the show’s Capital Fringe Page.


Here's a link to another review, just to keep us grounded - a bit more down-to-earth.

DC Theatre Scene 

DC Theatre Scene's T. Chase Meacham saw the same performance as City Paper's Ben Catell Noll.  I was running the lights that night, and definitely saw the performance Noll saw.  At the same time, even this slight discrepancy points to the ongoing risk the idea/ideal of a "shared imagining" takes! - it really depends upon each audience member entering into the embrace of the imagining...  Of course, I like the best responses best, and yet beyond personal satisfaction I also favor quite deliberately (as the point of focus for continuing improvement and honing) feedback aligned with the artistic-theatrical intention. Meanwhile, Meacham was a very conscientious journalist in his immediate correction of a factual error once it was pointed out to him. 

Theory into practice!

3 Performances left !

Caos on F

923 F St, NW
 Washington, DC 20004

Wednesday      July 24        10:15pm

Thursday         July 25          7:00pm

Saturday         July 27          8:00pm

Opening Weekend: "Must-See", Five Stars, "Best of the Fringe" from DCMTA

I think so far I've been able to get out a lot of theory and description about the process/practice of performing the Idyll form: what the experience is to audiences, what it's techniques are to actors, and what it's aesthetic intent is to contemporary theater.

How wonderful to receive a review that accords so well with these artistic intentions, as well as with this blog's ongoing project of communicating and clarifying (as much to myself as to others) the Idyll form as an idea and source of dynamic force for theater and acting.

As Murder on the Bare Stage went into the first weekend of the 2013 Capital Fringe Festival, DCMTA (DC Metro Theater Arts) had already recommended it as a "Must-See"; so then, it was all the more gratifying - and good for the show -  to receive DCMTA reviewer Veronique MacRae's opening night review giving us 5 Stars and "Best of the Fringe" status.

Here's the link to the review:     Five Star Murder

"Dark. Powerful. Mysterious. Magnetic. Suspenseful." leads into understanding and confirmation of the raison d'etre of our endeavor (this contoured collaboration intermixing the Idyll form with Mead's expertise in "dramatic recitation"): "...performance that thrusts the audience into a world of imagination and creativity that allows one to return the very heart and essence of theater."

Huge accolades for Stephen Mead include descriptions of his performance as "truly breathtaking," "captivating."

And I don't mind what was said about my pieces in the show, don't mind at all.

Articles on Murder on the Bare Stage

Perspectives/Previews

The Capital Fringe Festival opens tomorrow, and Murder on the Bare Stage opens the day after: 10:15 pm show at Caos on F Street

We've had three articles come out in the past couple of weeks about the show: two are previews written up by Stephen Mead, and one is from Michael Oliver, poet, playwright, and director, who also has a literary-focused show in CapFringe, Legal Tender - described as a fusion of prose and theater.

The articles can be found at the following links:

DCMTA

DC Theatre Scene

MD Theatre Guide

Venue and showtimes...

Caos on F

923 F St, NW
 Washington, DC 20004

 

Friday             July 12       10:15pm

Wednesday       July 17        9:30pm

Saturday        July 20          2:30pm

Sunday          July 21          8:45pm

Wednesday      July 24        10:15pm

Thursday         July 25          7:00pm

Saturday         July 27          8:00pm

And of course, tickets are available through our Fringe webpage here:

 

Murder on the Bare Stage at CapFringe

Murder on the Bare Stage tickets now on sale

Tickets went on sale this morning for the 2013 Capital Fringe Festival.  Click here for more information about the Festival, including its full listings of shows...

Capital Fringe

The webpage specifically for Murder on the Bare Stage is now live, and tickets are available here:

Murder on the Bare Stage at CapFringe

or call 866-811-4111

 

Plus, you can follow our show on Facebook at Guilt Bleeds

Murder on the Bare Stage coming to Capital Fringe (July 11 - 28)

Coming this July to CapFringe 2013: Murder on the Bare Stage, the show we debuted at Bloombars last fall (see October 2012 entry), combining Stephen Mead's expertise 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.


This hour-long version will have a run of seven performances during the festival.

The Capital Fringe organization does a great job at helping artists and producers organize, prepare, and promote their shows - xclnt professional training.  Both through and since our great time in March with the Happenings at the Harman Idylls showcase, we've been taking this process step by step.

Thus, some artwork for what CapFringe calls "promotional collateral" (Festival Guide, postcards, posters, etc.)...

And a 10-word headline for our page on the CapFringe website (coming soon)...

What's Hidden Bleeds - How Can a Crime Be Concealed?

And a 40-word blurb for the website and Festival Guide...

Nail-biting and Nerve-wracking: actor Stephen Mead (London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art-trained) combines his specialty in dramatic recitations of Poe and Dickens with poet Magus Magnus’ approach to theater of the imagination, for classic and avant-garde thrills and chills.     

Although going forward maybe I'd switch "classic and avant-garde" to "classic and new," in recurrent consideration of the term "avant-garde" and its applicability;  the contours of the show overall keep everything on edge, and the Idylls form - as theater of the shared imagining, in re-conception of an ancient form - is offbeat and radical (root-pulling) in its approach to contemporary theater and acting, even as the individual pieces retain narrative arcs...  getting to the root of what theater can do, or even tries to do, these days.  So yes, "avant-garde"; and yet, "Old-New" might express more precisely the dedication to innovative working against temporocentrism: in the Now, pushing to the verge where past, present, and future intersect in timelessness - the juncture for a real avant-garde practice (with true classics ever there/here to indicate the breach). Logos/Kairos.

our Facebook page:facebook.com/GuiltBleeds

Stephen Mead will be tweeting:  

twitter.com/StephenMMead   #MurderontheBareStage    #capfringe13 #CapFringeSoldOut

          

And Heeeeeer'es Stephen....

 

And you can get all the details for the show from our Press Release, template provided by the Capital Fringe Organization...

  Magus Magnus’ SiGiLPAL presents

Murder on the Bare Stage

a part of the 8^th  Annual Capital Fringe Festival July 11 - 28, 2013

A Program of Masterful Literary-Poetic Suspense

What:         Murder on the Bare Stage

featuring classically-trained actor Stephen Mead

                    devised by Stephen Mead and poet Magus Magnus

         

Where:       Caos on F

                   923 F St. NW, Washington DC, 20004

Between 9^th and 10^th streets on F, Gallery Place and Metro Center Metro stops.

When:        Showtimes

July 12^th, 10:15pm

July 17^th, 9:30 pm

July 20^th, 2:30 pm

July 21^st, 8:45 pm

July 24^th, 10:15 pm

July 25^th, 7:00 pm

July 27^th, 8:00 pm

Tickets & Passes: On Sale June 17th at CapitalFringe.org or by calling 866-811-4111.

About Murder on the Bare Stage

          Scary, spine-tingling, and entertaining, this program combines actor Stephen Mead’s expertise in dramatic recitation of authors such as Poe and Dickens with poet Magus Magnus’ approach to the “Idyll” form (theater of the imagination), for classic and avant-garde thrills and chills on the theme of violent crime.  Audiences enter into the mindscapes of killers, maniacs, the guilt-ridden, and the ruthlessly ambitious.  Suspenseful, intriguing.

About Stephen Mead and Magus Magnus

          Stephen Mead trained as an actor at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Stephen has worked for the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Arts Collection Fund, the National Trust (UK), Richmond Adult College, Missenden Abbey Buckinghamshire, among many other venues. He has appeared on the bill of the world-famous Player’s Theatre in London singing Victorian music-hall. Stephen had the honor of being invited to perform his one-man adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at the Dickens Festival in Dickens’ home town Rochester, Kent, in the historic Guildhall three years in a row. He also performed a tour of Switzerland under the auspices of the Anglo-Swiss society. His appearances in the Washington DC area include All's Well that Ends Well for the Maryland Shakespeare Festival, Romeo and Juliet for Vpstart Crow Theatre Company, and Medieval StoryLand, a hit at the 2012 Capital Fringe Festival;  he is also as an entertainer at local hotels, and has performed programs of his Dickens recitations including his one man show version of A Christmas Carol to acclaim at venues in DC and Virginia. 

          Magus Magnus is the author of The Re-echoes, Idylls for a Bare Stage, Heraclitean Pride, and Verb Sap.  As artistic director of SiGiLPAL (Sui Generis Literary Performing Arts Lab), he explores, develops, and showcases a variety of approaches to performing the written word. 

About Capital Fringe: Capital Fringe is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization founded in 2005 with the purpose of connecting exploratory artists with adventurous audiences by creating outlets and spaces for creative, cutting-edge, and contemporary performance in the District. Capital Fringe’s vital programs ensure the growth and continued health of the local and regional performing arts community by helping artists become independent producers while stimulating the vibrant cultural landscape in our city.

# # #   

This production is presented as a part of the 2013 Capital Fringe Festival, a program of the Washington, DC non-profit Capital Fringe.