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 

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

Happenings at the Harman, Wednesday 3/20 at Noon

 If you're near downtown D.C. during the week, please join us (and bring your lunch)!

"Perfect place to set up shop."

"Have you seen the bloom of late?"

"Sort of thing we did for instants on the beat during that jazz number."

Mindscape spills into the theater space 
as actor and audience collaborate to create “a shared imagining,” 

something uniquely possible to live theatre.

Idylls Showcase

Happenings at the Harman Lunchtime Performances
 hosted by Shakespeare Theatre Company

Wednesday, March 20th at Noon

Stephen Mead, “A Street-Merchant Imagines his Riches to Come”

                                    (After an anonymous author of The Arabian Nights)

Harlie Sponaugle, “A Mother Feels her Estranged Daughter’s Labor Pains”

                                    (vide Colette)

Genna Davidson, “A Dancer Stretches her Legs”

The Forum in Sidney Harman Hall at  610 F St. NW, Washington, D.C

"Happenings lunchtime performances start at noon.  
Bring your lunch and we will bring your shot of culture!"

Remember:  All performances are FREE and reservations are not required. Performances will last less than an hour.

Happenings at the Harman 

 Special thanks to Hannah Hessel at STC for having us.

Starring

Stephen Mead/Street-Merchant
"just a tray of glassware..."

Stephen Mead trained as an actor at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Besides appearing in many stage productions, he has worked as a drama adviser to Goldcrest Films UK and written for Channel4 (TV). Stephen has made a specialty of DRAMATIC RECITATIONS (from memory) from the works of DICKENS, EDGAR ALLAN POE and other 19th-century authors. These bring poems and prose by these writers to vivid life without costume, make-up, lights or scenery. Most 19th-century literature was written to be heard as well as read, and Stephen Mead’s enthralling renditions of these pieces have gripped audiences in the UK and the US since 1987. Stephen has worked for London’s 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 honour of being invited toperform 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.  With the Idylls and SiGiLPAL, he's on his way to CapFringe in summer 2013 with Murder on the Bare Stage (see October entry).

Harlie Sponaugle/ Mother
"Quietly, but it's begun."

Harlie Sponaugle has been a singer all her life and several years ago was guided to study acting in a serous way. Her singing voice has been described as the Steinway of sopranos, seamless powerful, warm and full on the top and bright and clear on the bottom. Whether performing opera or art songs, or a play or musical, she strives to stir the souls of her audience by painting compelling pictures that speak straight to the heart. Her roles in plays and musicals include the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet (VPStart Crow); Grandma in Claudie Hukill (Venus Theatre), King Duncan and the Medicine Woman in Macbeth (Impossible Theatre Co.); and Florence Foster Jenkins in Souvenir (for the Young Hearts Foundation). Operatic and other singing roles include Amelia in Un ballo in maschera (Repertory Opera of Washington), ensemble in Regina (with Patti LuPone at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theatre), Donna Anna in Don Giovanni (Riverbend Opera), and the Washington area premieres  of John Kander’s The Letter from Sullivan Ballou and Ricky Ian Gordon’s Orpheus and Eudice for soprano, clarinet and piano. She earned her Masters of Music at George Mason University  and completed the Honors Conservatory program at the Theatre Lab School of the Dramatic Arts. Her next appearance will be as Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s opera Macbeth with the Riverbend Opera Company in late May of 2013, a challenge she looks forward to with great excitement and wonder. More info at www.HarlieSponaugle.com.

Genna Davidson/Dancer
"turning and swirling, veiling, unveiling..."

Genna Davidson is a professional actress in Washington, DC. She was most recently seen in dog & pony dc's A Killing Game; the Hub Theatre's Big Love (ensemble/fiddler); and Tattooed Potato's The Nightmare Dreamer. In addition to acting, Genna has been flirting with puppetry for a number of years and is producing and collaborating on a Wit's End Puppets original: The Amazing and Marvelous Cabinets of Kismet. Look for it at the Mead Theatre Lab in April and May, 2013. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2008 with a BA in Theatre Performance. 

About the Show...

All three pieces showcased today represent the development of a theatrical approach based on poet and playwright Magus Magnus’ years of engagement with the form of the Idyll - poetic monologue designed for performance. Such a practice comes out of interpreting the Idyll, originated by the ancient Greek poet Theocritus, as a “shared imagining” (with reference to its roots in earlier Mime and its etymology related to words such as Idea, Ideal, Idol, Images, and Eidolon). The actual medium of the Idyll form is imagination, and the performer works in cooperation and with the goodwill of the audience to foster the imagining of the piece.  Indeed, audience members themselves are encouraged to become conscious of this process, whereby they notice themselves engaging a communal mental space – together, we enter a landscape of the imagination.

A full treatment of the Theocritean Idyll as reconceived in its relevance and possibility for contemporary theater (not least with respect to what theater and theater alone can still do amidst the worldwide sensory bombardment of screens and media) forms the introduction to Magnus’ Idylls for a Bare Stage ( twentythreebooks, 2011).  This introduction was republished just this month as an essay titled “Imagination and Performance” in the journal Nerve Lantern: Axon of Performance Literature.  Nerve Lantern

Deepest gratitude to the three featured performers, Genna Davidson, Harlie Sponaugle, and Stephen Mead, all of whom have given a great deal of sustained time and effort to engage the process, and contributed their theatrical creativity, insights, experience, and expertise in collaborative development of a performance style effective for the Idylls form.

Poetry in Community vid featuring Idylls on a Baltimore sidewalk

 

Check out this video on Baltimore-based Poetry in the Community.

PiC was one of the hosts of the 7th Annuel Cruellest Month Poetry and Performance Festival (CruMoPoPerFest) last spring.

As you'll find in the April archives, scenes from the idylls were performed as part of the wrap-up celebration of poetry month in Baltimore.  Idylls actors Stephen Mead, Genna Davidson, and Sue Struve performed in front of the Waverly branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library on Saturday, April 28th, 2012.

All three of them show up in this video, created by Evan Bartos.

Stephen Mead is there at the start, in the midst of his rendition of  "A Street-Merchant Imagines his Riches to Come" from Idylls for a Bare Stage.

Sue Struve is seen in action doing "A Native Chief's Captive Woman Guards One Freshly Caught" beginning at :38.

And you can see and hear a moment of Genna Davidson's Antigone at :50.

More glimpses of each of them throughout...

Join Poetry in Community on Facebook here 

 My daughter Hero Magnus is in the video as well, beatboxing and singing at the open mic (she's in a black and white striped shirt);  you can hear her voice early on, and my own - I had a chance to mention how performance can create that temporary community of audience and artist (as driven by a shared imagining).

Overall, you might get some hint from this video of what an idylls performance is like live, on the street, and certainly it provides striking glimpses of the intensity and excellence Stephen, Genna, and Sue bring to their performances.

Slideshow for April 28th, CruMoPoPerFest in Waverly neighborhood, Balto

The links below can give you a feel for the course of the whole day in Waverly: Idylls with Stephen Mead, Sue Struve, and Genna Davidson; beatboxing with Max Bent; open mic poetry and music; plus sidewalk and side-of-building chalk drawing and writing. (My daughter Hero shows up frequently throughout the day, on the mic, and with the chalk).

April 28th Slideshow  

Documentation by Douglas Mowbray, publisher of twentythreebooks, publisher of Idylls for a Bare Stage.

Cruellest Month Poetry and Performance Festival blog for April 28th 

 

More Proof in Concept

On the one hand, my intentions with this project are artistic.

On the other, my artistic intentions overall refuse to make a distinction between the work and life - it all has to do with life, daily life as much as anything else, as much as anything highlighted or set off as "work," the art has to be inseparable from living, or what's the point...

Life, daily life, also Lifetime/the Aion, as it was formulated (with reference to Heraclitus) in my book Heraclitean Pride.

This is related to the idea of the idylls being able to be done anywhere;  the work can be done anywhere, suitable for proscenium or the street, in an embrace of the interplay of text, subtext, and context.

text (the work as its written)
subtext (meanings spoken and unspoken, tacit and explicit, while part of the role of performance is to engage and activate certain subtleties, ambivalences, and undercuttings here)
context (where art interacts with life, the surroundings, the moment, with potential to explode the given)

Anyways, Saturday (weekend before last, April 28th) was a wild ride.
That was the wrap up of CruMoPoPerFest in front of Waverly library in Baltimore, and Idylls performers had to contend with a number of truly exciting challenges, among them: threatening rain; loud drumming from the grassy median right across from them, where a local high school marching band raised money by holding buckets out to cars lined up at the traffic light; and, during what was almost a mellow period of the afternoon, a belligerent, incoherent, clearly mentally ill man shouting and trying to interfere with the performances.

Nevertheless, each performer was imperturbable, and even during the loudest part of the drumming, an inner circle of "performer-created performance space" held its own, the audience hanging in there, intent on the proceedings.  The day as a whole had a satisfying sense of rhythm to it.  Proof in concept, thanks to the skills, powers of concentration, and bare-stage presences of Genna Davidson, Sue Struve, and Stephen Mead.

I'll post pics, recordings, vids from the event, when they come in - I think we'll be receiving all three.

There was a phrase that jingled back and forth between Christophe Casamassima (as co-founder of Poetry in Community, one of the organizers of CruMoPoPerFest) and my 12-yr-old daughter, Hero.
(Hero was an active participant, learning beatboxing with Max Bent, and singing pop songs during open mic sessions, including - ! - Kelly Clarkson's treatment of the Nietzsche quote, "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger").   I'll pass along what Christophe repeated back to me by email last week...

This Saturday,

It may not have be

An Ideal environment

But it certainly was

An Idyll environment

So much fun. And sheer anxiety! Hope the actors had fun too.

Derived from street and marketplace theatre in ancient Greece, the idyll form creates its own ideal theatrical space; added to that, recently came across Guy Davenport's statement in his essay collection, Every Force Evolves a Form, that not only was this sort of theatre done in street, agora, and private homes (salons) - but also in what he describes as "wine shops"...  a relevant idea somehow, to keep in mind for another time  - wine and idylls...



 
As intriguing as Saturday was, the day before - a cold blustery Friday - Genna and I rehearsed her Antigone on the National Mall - this was Genna's intrepid idea, and it was incredibly instructive and favorable of possibility.  We were near the Smithsonian metro stop, in front of the Castle.  She did not perform, but rehearsed, and yet somehow that fact was communicated to passers-by - the issue of subtext and context again.  What were the cues that so unmistakably distinguished performance from rehearsal?  ...for further inquiry, intimately connected with the idylls theory and practice of performance, and spillage of art into life.

CruMoPoPerFest this Saturday in Baltimore - Idylls Line-Up

Exciting to be a part of this event:

7th Annual Cruellest Month Poetry and Performance Festival (CruMoPoPerFest)

Saturday, April 28th 11am-4pm
Baltimore's National Poetry Month Celebration wraps up
at the Waverly branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library
400 East 33rd Street, Baltimore Maryland 21218  
410-396-6053

Scenes from Idylls for a Bare Stage will be interspersed with open mic sets and a special performance by Outside the Box, an interactive exploration of the Elements of Music through beatboxing, led by Max Bent, Waverly resident and Young Audiences of Maryland Teaching Artist.

Performers Stephen Mead, Sue Struve, Harlie Sponaugle, and Genna Davidson (each profiled elsewhere in this blog - please check out the archives) present individual Idylls throughout the day.  Here's their schedule...

Idylls Line-Up

11:00 am. Stephen Mead
in "A Street-Merchant Imagines his Riches to Come" 

(after an anonymous author of The Arabian Nights)

Stephen Mead

12 noon. Idylls Sequence
Stephen Mead in "A Bandit Plots a Murder by the Road"
Sue Struve in "A Native Chief's Captive Woman Guards One Freshly Caught" 

(vide Jorge Luis Borges)

Stephen Mead in "A Reveler Walks Home to his Family by Moonlight"

Sue Struve

1:45 pm.  Harlie Sponaugle
in "A Mother Feels Her Estranged Daughter's Labor Pains"

(vide Colette)

Harlie Sponaugle

 2:30 pm. Genna Davidson 
in "Antigone Buries Her Brother's Body Against Orders of the King"

(after Sophocles)

Genna Davidson

Here's the complete schedule, with Idylls, Open Mic (sign-ups available throughout the day), and Max Bent's Outside the Box:

In Others' Words: Idylls as Book, and as Approach to Acting

Now that Idylls for a Bare Stage is out, a definite shift has occurred with regard to "releasing" the work:  from creating and doing performances off a manuscript, and towards the publication of the book, to... the book itself, vehicle for the Idyll idea and form, both on the page and in its activation off the page for performance.

Here's how others - interactive with the project along the way - have taken the work...


On the book itself:

Magnus has performed his versions of Heraclitus as multi-voiced, choral readings improvised from texts by performers and audience, as texts to be read with musicians, and as philosophy in his book Heraclitean Pride.   In this volume, he presents “Idylls”, a form originated by the Greek poet Theocritus.   These are not idylls as pastoral, rustic poems, but, as Magnus describes in his introduction:  “street theater for daily life, skits done anywhere, solo performers and small groups of actors as part of the activity of the marketplace.  Scenes of daily life, in daily life.”   These idylls, versions of Theocritus, Sophocles and St. Francis, and stories inspired by Whitman, Colette, and Borges, can be read as poems, or performed as dramatic monologues.    M. brings a poet’s feeling for the texture of language to these dramatic works so that each character speaking a monologue uses a unique vocabulary and unique speech rhythms.   He opens with a sorceress and ends with the mythical inventor of the alphabet, taking us from magic incantations to the magic of writing.   Magnus has given us rich, evocative texts, ripe for private reading or public performance.

                                           - Chris Mason, author of Hum Who Hiccup, member of TheTinklers, Old Songs, and Coo Coo Rockin' Time


And on the Idylls as theatre, along with specific acting approaches tailored for the form and useful for any poetically-charged performances, as described and theorized in the book's introduction, and as developed in hands-on workshops by the author (the performers quoted engaged the workshop techniques with me, and went on to perform the pieces in contexts described earlier in this blog):

The words that Magus has crafted into idylls are so rich and joyous to speak that there are endless possibilities for experiencing their inherent power.

It has been invaluable for me to work without an end in sight and to work so deeply and one-on-one with this text, with Magus, and with myself. It's freeing for me to have a consistent practice and continuous work. Now I'm not just working when I land a job or for the next audition, but towards infinite opportunity to stand-up and perform a poetic monologue for anyone who might be available to watch and listen.

The concept of monologue as performance, not just performance within a larger script or as something to use at an audition, but as self-contained artwork gives me confidence as an actress. I'm not sure I can explain the significance of this idea, but I see sunlight when I think about it. Perhaps reasserting the monologue as performance gives me a sense of creative control over a form of acting that is often termed loathsome, annoying, arduous, and impossible to wrangle.

The technique's emphasis on being present with everyone and everything in the performance space has been supremely important to me.  In my experience "stage presence" is theater vocabulary often given short shrift when learning how to act. It is tricky for the actor to both completely imbibe the surroundings, allowing impulses to enter and leave without blocking, altering or suspending them, and then simultaneously craft a visceral experience fully manifest in a different time & place. A shameless spirit of imagination must takeover and pull the actor from moment to moment without hesitation. And every step of the way, the imagination is fed by the power of the words which given freedom to move will work magic on their audience.

                                                               -Genna Davidson, actress/musician/puppeteer

Working with Magus on his idyll, "A Mother Feels her Estranged Daughter's Labor Pains," has been a revelation for me. Numerous directors have told me that I don't need to "do" so much when I'm on stage, but they never really explained what they meant. Using Magus' approach of focusing on the power and expressive potential of the words, and working with his beautifully crafted poetic monologue, I've learned how to immerse myself in the river of words and let them carry me through a thoroughly honest and moving performance. I've used an excerpt from the idyll for several auditions, and each performance has evoked a thoughtful response from the auditors beyond the usual "thank you."

                                                                               - Harlie Sponaugle, Actress/Singer

  As an actor, working with Magus has opened my eyes to the raw power inherent in the text. When I focus on the sound of the words, I bring life to their meaning. Playing with pace, volume, and emphasis frees up my voice and moves me away from dry analysis. His body and voice exercises calm me and prepare me to genuinely embrace my surroundings and the audience. I find that as the text begins to breathe, my imagination is released and I become open to discoveries about my character. Magus has developed an approach that has transformed the way I work on a role. It will infuse energy and power into any performer's work.

                                                                                         - Sue Struve, D.C.-area Actor

This approach to acting has been incredibly empowering.  The ideas of embracing the audience and embracing yourself as a performer free you from worrying about naturalism and lets you savor the poetry of powerful language, giving you and the audience a heightened sense of what's possible.  As an actor you can feel the audiences imaginations feeding you and letting you take a fresh journey with the material each time.   So often we want to shut out the reality of the performance, but by embracing it, we are empowered to actually create a greater reality on stage and an exuberant experience for audience and performer.  It has freed me as an actor more than any exercise or method I have ever tried.

                                                                                         - Rachel Morrissey, actress/storyteller

 

Highlights from the Idylls Show, November 20th Launch

All photos by Douglas Mowbray.

Entry into the Athenaeum

 

Opening the Show:  Sue Struve
"A Native Chief's Captive Woman Guards One Freshly Caught"

Sue Struve - "Captive Woman" in Idylls

 "Welcome.  This is your introduction to the wilderness and barbaric life."

 Kimberly Mikec 
"A Sorceress Casts a Spell on her Faithless Lover"

"...and all I'll do is run my fingers over his strong chest."

Kimberly Mikec - "Sorceress" in Idylls

Rachel Morrissey
Anne Ashbaugh's "Leda" and more...   (as in, "More, more, more, more!")

 "Great Car!  Great Car!" (in homage to Richard Foreman)

Rachel Morrissey - "Leda" in Anne Ashbaugh's soliloquy

Harlie Sponaugle
"A Mother Feels Her Estranged Daughter's Labor Pains"
  

Harlie Sponaugle - A "Mother" in Idylls

"Is that your cry?"

Genna Davidson
"Antigone Buries her Brother's Body Against Orders of the King"
  

Genna Davidson - "Antigone" in Idylls

  

"I feel I've gone the uttermost limit of daring..."

Interlude:  Old Songs

Songs of Hipponax

Old Songs - L to R: Rebby Sharp, Mark Jickling, Chris Mason, and David Brumbaugh

"Hermes, blissful Hermes

You  know how to wake the sleeper"

Carol McCaffrey
"A Saint Preaches to the Birds"

"so that you may fill the pure air with song..."

Carol McCaffrey - "A Saint" in Idylls

Margaret Anthony
reading Kharms

Margaret Anthony, reading Daniil Kharms' "An Optical Illusion"

"...showing him his fist!"

Paul Morton
"Palamedes, Inventor of Numbers, Alphabets, and Lighthouses, Muses Upon his Accomplishments"

Paul Morton - "Palamedes" in Idylls

"No more than a seafarer in soul am I..."

The Cast

And so there you have it, the show, this iteration of Idylls, this incarnation of it, November 20th 2011...

and here I am - hosting and welcoming then, and welcoming now and soon to come, next iterations, incarnations...

Magus Magnus

For a look at the full set of photos, click
http://www.flickr.com/photos/buddhakowski/sets/72157628162249269/with/6392465665/

- - -
Don't forget to order the book, Idylls for a Bare Stage 
(http://twentythreebooks.com )
for its three-part offering:  poetry on the page, poetic monologues for the stage, and - through the book's introduction - an old-new theory and practice for Acting and Theatre (with a chewy set of monologues for the actor)...

Through the reinvented form of the Idyll, affirmation of the actor as an independent artist, the audition monologue turned on its head into theatre itself, theatre that can be done almost anywhere.

And please check out my other books as well:   
Heraclitean Pride http://furniturepressbooks.com/books/magnuspride/  
and Verb Sap http://narrow-house.blogspot.com/

Both Heraclitean Pride and Verb Sap can be ordered from SPD Books
http://www.spdbooks.org/Search/Default.aspx?AuthorName=Magus+Magnus

Many thanks from M.

Idylls previews in New York this coming weekend - Actress Profiles: Genna Davidson and Kimberly Mikec

The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy (SAGP) Conference
Saturday, October 22nd  Fordham University - Lincoln Center campus 
2pm  "Anger and Fear" panel

Thanks to philosophy professor Anne Ashbaugh, author of Mythopoiesis, I've been invited to participate on a panel at the SAGP conference this weekend, and to present performances of poetic monologues.


Two Washington D.C.-based performers, Genna Davidson and Kimberly Mikec, will drive up with me on Friday, to meet a third, Rachel Morrissey, who has moved to New York to attend the New School since beginning the Idylls project with us this past summer.  All three will perform at the panel, as well as at the November 20th event in Alexandria.


Right now I'll profile the two making the trip up from the D.C. area:


Kimberly Mikec in "A Sorceress Casts a Spell on Her Faithless Lover"
   

Kimberly Mikec - "Simone" the Sorceress in Idylls

      The Sorceress Idyll is the form most closely taking off from the original form by Theocritus.  My version tracks Theocritus' version as well as Virgil's, while reinterpreting both the scene and the form itself.  Kimberly's interpretation of her character has been fascinating for me - my "Simone" already had some contemporary twists on the ancient Greek Simaetha, and now she has been given a cute geeky goth cast to her personality, Kimberly's inspiration for making sense of the deliberate-but-difficult contradictory and anachronistic elements of the piece. Meanwhile, Kimberly's approach to creating the scene out of thin air in great detail demonstrates the Idyll's connection to earlier Mime, and indeed Theocritus' Simaetha Idyll was also known as one of his "urban mimes."

     Kimberly Mikec plays a staffer in "Game Change," an upcoming HBO movie, starring Julianne Moore. In addition, she has performed in various plays and musicals in the United States and Germany. She has played major roles in in such plays as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "The Real Thing," "Plaza Suite," "Trojan Women" and "Diary of Anne Frank."


Genna Davidson in "Antigone Buries her Brother's Body Against Orders of the King"


    

Genna Davidson - "Antigone" in the Idylls

     The Sorceress Idyll exemplifies the form as I've reinterpreted it from Theocritus and its evolution from Mime; that is why it kicks off Idylls for a Bare Stage both as book and as theatre (when presented in full). 

     The piece Genna has taken on is a compression of the Antigone tragedy into a packed and smoldering new form;  it pushes the Idyll to its limits, and Genna has evolved her performance to fill the form every instant and convolution of the way, intensely.   I think, through Genna, Antigone can be made understandable to us like never before.  Her own performance-process working through of an understanding of Antigone's decision and dilemma recently brought her to a fantastic aphorism during rehearsal:  "Not to pollute the self with a weaker action" - Genna Davidson


     Genna Davidson is a professional actress in Washington, DC. She has performed with Deviated Theatre, dog & pony dc, The Bay Theatre Company, and numerous Capital Fringe Festival shows. In addition to acting, she plays violin/fiddle with her band, The Josh Drews; she's a puppeteer with Wit's End Puppets; and she's hoping to be a Linklater Voice teacher one day. Some of her favorite onstage experiences include being an apprentice clown for 500clown, and playing fiddle for a workshop production of The Rude Mechanicals' I've Never Been So Happy when it was performed at Arena Stage. She graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2008 with a BA in Theatre Performance.






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New York friends have a chance to see us at the 2pm panel (the performances won't begin until close to 3pm), Saturday October 22nd, at Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, 60th Street and Columbus Avenue.  Panel attendees need to register to get a badge in order to move around the SAGP conference, but it's free to do so.


And of course, Washington D.C. Metro -area friends will have a chance to see Genna Davidson and Kimberly Mikec in action, as described, on November 20th.