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.

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: