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

Upcoming in the 2012/2013 Season: Happenings at the Harman

Shakespeare Theatre Company will host an Idylls Showcase this Spring at Sidney Harman Hall.

Shakespeare Theatre Company's Happenings at the Harman

Click on the March tab under "Happenings at the Harman Lunchtime Performances."

Idylls Showcase

Mindscapes – whether the inner worlds of killers or saints, soldiers or sorceresses, Antigone, Caliban, a dancer stretching her legs, or a mother feeling her estranged daughter’s labor pains – spill into the theatrical space as actor and audience collaborate to create “a shared imagining” more vivid than any stage set.  D.C.-based actors perform the technique of the “idyll,” character-driven poetic monologue as theater, with selections from poet and playwright Magus Magnus’ Idylls for a Bare Stage.

Save the Date!

3/20/2013

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:

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.






...

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.