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.

Performer Profiles: Carol McCaffrey and Margaret Anthony

The Idylls show is less than a week away now...  coming this Sunday!

Carol McCaffrey in "A Saint Preaches to the Birds"

"A Saint" in Idylls for a Bare Stage

     
     Carol comes by this piece honestly, not least because she's a bird lover and bird owner... she's devoted to her four cockatiels, Casey and Maria ("the girls," as she says) and Beanie and Buddy ("the boys").
     
     Actually, her love of birds indicates something more thorough in her than your average pet owner's love of a pet; it is part of her active appreciation of animals and nature in general, a reverence for life practiced and cultivated with an affinity for the example of St. Francis;  this is a conscious reverence, and a conscious spiritual journeying which informs her as a performer, and she has brought this to bear for "A Saint Preaches to the Birds."
     
     To the point that, in her process as an performer, Spirit demands of the Show - accommodation.  

     Now, it helps that she has years-long experience of being with birds on the individual level, interacting with her actual birds and understanding their responses, so that in this Idyll the responsiveness of the imaginary birds during her preaching can be very real to her and thus made real to audiences (indeed, she rehearsed regularly in front of Casey, Maria, Beanie, and Buddy, and when I once joined her for a session with them, I was charmed by how attentive they were, seemingly to the words themselves, but most definitely to whatever nonverbal communication Carol conveyed to them through their mutual trust and deep familiarity).  Then, from there, she taps into that broader attunement, that understanding of what it is to become one with nature - whether as an aspiration or attainment - and allows it to operate on a mass scale, for a vision of those flocks of birds surrounding the saint on the mountain.
    
     Of course, we're not really or only talking about birds here - neither with this saint (mine or Carol's), nor with the St. Francis who historically preached to birds;  and yet, hopefully, the high ceilings of the Athenaeum can accommodate such flutter of multiplicity.

      Carol McCaffrey is a DC-based actor, and Actors' Center Board Member, who performs on stage, film and video.  She studies with Carol Fox Prescott.  Her performances have ranged playing senators to scary daycare ladies, from Kate in Harold Pinter's "Old Times" to the Wicked Witch of the West in children's theatre.  Favorite past shows include playing a variety of characters in an evening of one acts by Christopher Durang - and most recently stepping into Clara Barton's shoes for a corporate event performance.  However, all that said, stepping into the shoes and sermon of Magus' "A Saint Preaches to the Birds," has been rewarding on an entirely new level, and Carol is most grateful for it. 



Margaret Anthony, reading Kharms

reading Daniil Kharms on November 20th

 
     The acting techniques developed for performing the Idylls and other poetic monologues also have their utility in readings, recitation.  I take particular pleasure in reading and hearing Daniil Kharms, a Russian poet of the early Soviet era (he starved to death in a prison hospital under Stalin), who has been becoming more and more widely known in English over the last couple of decades.  It seems appropriate to extend such techniques to reading Kharms, in consideration of the form of his writings and their naming as "incidents" or "incidences" mentioned in a previous post, happily compatible with the incidental nature of the Idyll.
   
     Margaret has taken on these efforts splendidly, honing what can be brought out during a reading, and she'll surprise you with her embrace of the brutal vigor, black comedic harshness, yet eruptive absurdist hilarious spontaneity of Kharms - a voice like no other.
  
     Margaret Anthony is a trial attorney in Washington D.C., and member of The Actor's Center;  she has acted and directed for Silver Spring Stage, and has had roles with  St. Mark's Theater and Amnesty International.

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"Everything that's extreme is difficult.  The middle parts are done more easily.  The very center requires no effort at all.  The center is equal to equilibrium.  There's no fight in it."
     -Daniil Kharms, #5 in The Blue Notebook (Matvei Yankelevich translator)