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.

Performer Profile: Natalie Cutcher

This Friday morning, for our program titled A Shared Imagining: Beyond Self-Enclosure in Performance through the theory and technique of the Idyll at Towson University's 5th annual Geo-aesthetics Conference (see just previous entry), Natalie Cutcher will apply our theory and approach to "Leda" by Anne Ashbaugh, a poetic soliloquy. This will directly follow Anne's lecture on Penelope - I'm thrilled once again to present her "Leda" in a new incarnation with a new performer, beautiful as it is in its poetry and sensuous sense, and compatible as it is with the multilevel imaginative approach of the Idylls performance technique.

I called Natalie after watching her at the D.C Actors' Center Lottery Auditions this fall, and she came to our work cold, without introduction to our performances or participation in the Power of the Poetic Monologue workshops. 

Nevertheless, Natalie immediately accessed the poetry of Anne Ashbaugh's Leda during the first rehearsal, with an instinctive feel for the more abstract aspects of the piece's flights ("the pleasure clinging to our dying flesh surpasses god's, persists, but slides from the immortal frame not knowing how to end, stretching"), and since then she has brought out naturally, with flowing ease, the play - the clash - of  human encounter with the divine. Here, with the rape of Leda by Zeus as a swan, this encounter is violent, transgressive, under duress - all that is indeed there in her relation to the character, and yet Natalie keeps the lyric in her body as she moves and at times glides through the piece, appropriate to its mythic import.

The lyric in Natalie's movement: towards activation of the intrinsic power of words, the Idylls approach begins with a variety of exercises designed to connect to the script with immediacy, by-passing analysis; recently, we've tried taking spatial, stretching, dance-like passes through the words, and this has had an excellent effect for Natalie's Leda, becoming part of her performance and interpretation, giving her an ethereal glide in retention of flight and myth along with the realistic human psychology of coping with a violation - flight of poetic myth even in the piece's affirming human love and capacity over the divine.

From activation of the power of the words to conscious blocking of the imagination, Natalie has created multi-level access to Anne's poetry, ready to place - in the bare space of a conference hall - feathers in the air, a ringing in her Leda's ears, the bizarre divine egg in Leda's womb.

Natalie Cutcher as Leda

Natalie Cutcher is currently pursuing acting in the DC metro area.  She has previously been seen collaborating with Faction of Fools, Kennedy Center's Page-to-Stage Festival, Source Festival, Washington Rogues, Arts Alive, and Empty Chair Theatre Company.  While earning her BA from Muhlenberg College she had the opportunity to study Commedia dell'Arte and clowning abroad in Italy as well as perform locally.  She is happily a member of the Ford's Theatre team by day.

Theory and Technique of the Idyll

Over the past couple of months, on the way towards March 20th's Idylls showcase for Happenings at the Harman, the technique of the Idyll for performance has sharpened in definitiveness.  This development has occurred during conceptual meetings, as well as in rehearsal - part of our practice and process - and not least in relation to a workshop I gave in January at Bloombars (which had the additional bonus of bringing new excellent performers in on the project).

The techniques continue to evolve simply due to gained experience over time, from continuous honing of the theory and vision as expressed here in this blog ("A Shared Imagining" as an interpretation of the nature of the poetry performance form of the Idyll), and through steady application of ideas found in the introduction of my book Idylls for a Bare Stage - that introduction now appearing as an essay titled "Imagination and Performance" in the performance journal Nerve Lantern #6   (officially available on March 18th).  

More and more, we have begun to rehearse consciously on multiple levels of imagination.  I'll give more details and specifics on how we've stylized the performances in relation to imagination - how we actually conduct blocking in the realm of the imaginary - when I post specifically on the Harman show.

Meanwhile next week, on Friday March 8th, for Towson University's 5th annual Geo-aesthetics Conference, we're presenting a program titled A Shared Imagining: Beyond Self-Enclosure in Performance through the theory and technique of the Idyll, featuring performances by Stephen Mead and Natalie Briggs Cutcher.

I hope to post a profile of Natalie in time for the conference.  She'll be performing Anne Ashbaugh's Leda.

And Stephen is with us once again, doing the Street Merchant from my Idyll of the Arabian Nights.
 


Stephen's complete bio can be found where he's profiled elsewhere on the site, and his more recent 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 Happenings at the Harman, while Murder on the Bare Stage (see October entry) will go to CapFringe in summer 2013.

 

Stephen Mead as the Street Merchant

Here's some further context about the upcoming Geo-aesthetics Conference presentation (providing a number of indications relevant to the techniques in question)...

When the conference's Call for Abstracts came to my attention, I couldn't help but notice how much the wording of the call, and its concepts, corresponded to our structural sense of what we were doing through performance of the Idylls, including what's explored on this blog, under its title.  

So, I'm posting the call here, as well as a version of my abstract answering that call, for another angle on the uses and intent behind the Idyll form conceived of as "A Shared Imagining."

Call for Abstracts

Fifth Annual Geo-aesthetics Conference

March 8-9, 2013

Geo-aesthetics and World Peace

The International Association for the Study of Environment, Space, and Place will sponsor the Fifth Geo-aesthetics Conference at Towson University. The conference is co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Art at Towson University. 

In the light of the rise of modern subjectivism, one should not be surprised to find out that aesthetic experience has increasingly fallen under the reign of subjectivism. The construction of the individual as a self-enclosed entity has led to the restriction of aesthetic experience to such an enclosure. Accordingly, for many of us, aesthetic experience is a matter of inwardness. It is a matter for what is private. This location has become a refuge where one finds solace or inner peace. This circumscription of aesthetic experience has severed a deeper relation the individual has with others. The encounter with other individuals is often an encounter with other isolated beings. Consequently, aesthetic experience appears foreign to the experience of the common bond that human beings ought to have with one another. The more individuals exclusively cultivate inner peace, the more they become estranged from experiencing the common bond they have with other human beings and, hence, from a truly authentic peace. Since, for us, “to be” is to be “in-the-world”, genuine peace can only be cultivated in an aesthetic experience that is rooted in-the-world and that embraces the bond that all human beings have with one another. The conference seeks to bring together those who are interested in sharing their views on this matter. Since the world is essentially sensuous, participants will share with each other their sense of sensuous rootedness in-the-world and also on how this rootedness bears on world peace. Presentations that seek to affirm or reclaim the sensuous as the site for the generation, preservation, and promotion of the world peace are welcome. 
...

Presentations of art works, musical performances, poetry readings, and theatrical performances are encouraged.   

A Shared Imagining: Beyond Self-Enclosure in Performance

abstract for a seminar/performance presentation by Magus Magnus

To this day millions still sing along with John Lennon’s “Imagine,” even as we’re more likely to come across bumper stickers which read “Visualize Whirled Peas” rather than “Visualize World Peace.”  Thus, there is some acknowledgement that the practice of extending the inner world outwardly, en masse – through imagination and conscious visualization – has a part in healing the earth and humanity. 

...through years of engagement with the poetic performance form of the Idyll, a practice has emerged which encourages people in becoming conscious and purposeful in creation of an open bond between themselves as performers (or speakers of any kind) and their audience, as opposed to retaining the usual self-enclosure of “delivery” – the practice comes out of interpreting the Idyll, from its roots in Theocritus, as a “shared imagining.”  Participation in the theory and techniques of the Idyll helps hone approaches to performance and text in which boundaries between artist and audience are dissolved in strengthened awareness of a common bond.  Also, the seminar will include – or could consist solely of – performances demonstrating such an approach, bringing the audience into full consciousness of a communal mental space, often experienced as an “evolutionary” sense of multiplicity in the relational possibilities of self with others. Much of the content of this presentation is an entry into ideas formulated in the introduction of Magus Magnus’ book Idylls for a Bare Stage (twentythreebooks, 2011, Towson); forthcoming at about the time of the conference, the book introduction will be republished as an essay titled “Imagination and Performance” in the journal Nerve Lantern: Axon of Performance Literature.

Indeed, the seminar will consist almost solely of Natalie's and Stephen's performance, with brief outlining of the shared imaging concept, towards bringing our audience to a consciousness of their engagement in this shared imagining - something only possible in live theater and, at this level of conscious practice, something unique to the poetic performance form of the Idyll.

 

and now towards 2013

Parading with the Idylls into the New Year!

Much in the works, and I'm finding myself orienting to the coming year in a number of ways with regard to the Idylls, and with regard to its (currently informal) framework for performance approaches to the form, and beyond: SiGiLPAL (Sui Generis Literary Performing Arts Lab).

Right around the corner, as mentioned in previous posts: Happenings at the Harman will host an Idylls showcase on March 20th.

As also mentioned in this space, "Murder on the Bare Stage" debuted at Bloombars the weekend before Halloween.  It is definitely a show - upon the experience of that night, we've applied to take it to Fringe this summer.  The intermixing of the Idyll form and Stephen Mead's specialty in dramatic recitation brought out the contours and distinctive effects of each approach, for an intense impact on the audience.  This, in service of the chilling nature of the theme.

Thus began our collaboration with Bloombars, a wonderful community arts space in Columbia Heights led by John Chambers, with poetry-related programming managed by Gowri Koneswaran, both incredible people to work with.   Upcoming soon there: I'm holding a workshop on the performance technique of the Idyll, titled Power of the Poetic Monologue, on January 13th, 2:30pm. This is an introductory version of the 3-part workshops I did at the D.C. Actors' Center in 2011, developing the acting and theatrical approach to the form.  The workshop also functions as an audition for performers interested in the possibility of paid performance opportunities through the Idylls/SiGiLPAL projects. More information about the workshops/audition at the following links...

Bloombars Calendar 

 Facebook event

Furthermore, I'm excited by the upcoming appearance of my introduction to Idylls for a Bare Stage in the journal Nerve Lantern, edited by the painstaking, thorough, and wonderfully sensitive-to-detail Ellen Redbird.

Nerve Lantern: Axon of Performance Literature

For the purposes of this publication, the introduction is titled "Imagination and Performance."

Idylls for a Bare Stage exists as a book (you can order it here), and also as a complete theatrical piece to be performed in order, all twelve idylls; at the same time individual idylls have been and can be performed on their own, part of what I've been doing on my own initiative, and as reflected in this blog.  Also, the book can function for actors as a high end source for audition monologues. 

Yet, beyond the work as a book and piece(s) for theater, there is the idea of the idyll, and its concomitant theory and techniques for acting and theater - the idea of the Idyll as a form, the re-interpretation of an ancient form for contemporary purposes.

This is what the introduction to the book (and its upcoming incarnation as an essay, "Imagination and Performance") offers; and this is what I'm trying for in the workshops/audition, "Power of the Poetic Monologue" - to activate an idea of, and for, performance which addresses  the question, what does live theater still have to offer uniquely in competition with every other form of media?

Well, for one thing, the word.  The live word, the living embodied in-person delivery of charged language.  The "poetic," in the flesh. Live bodies, bare stage - rather than going for expensive spectacle, I'm going for portable essence.

In developing the Idylls approach, there has been much honing in on a contemporary standard for the stage (or sidewalk) delivery of poetic language: much to avoid in both the theater world and the poetry reading world, all the varieties of pretension from staginess to "wispiness," from the overly intoned to the monotone...  an essential aspect of the idylls technique is a trust in the intrinsic power of words.  Each word speaks itself, if you let it.

From there - and this goes deeper into the nature of the form, delving into the etymologies of the ancient Greek word idyll and its cousins, as I do in the essay/book introduction - an exploration of the living invisible, basically: the relationship of imagination to performance.

We are actually working with the invisible, or the heretofore or nearly invisible: invisible, because imagined - conscious workings of the imagination, live.  This is something that cannot be done when involved with the intermediary of screens.

The Idyll form consciously works on at least three levels of reality (and part of the art is to make this conscious both to artist and audience):  the actor on the stage, the body/performer on the stage (visible); the imagined stage setting as created by the actor in character (actually invisible, but the audience sees it!); and then also, the character's internal life conveyed to the audience through the shared imagining - this is almost all invisible, but creates an unmistakable impact on the performance, one can tell when an actor is truly "seeing" whatever memory or projection she or he is putting to words.

The actor must actually imagine what he or she is thinking about, and the audience can perceive that - it is all apparently invisible, though likely we find clues and our brains put it all together from facial expressions, position of the bodies, even style of breathing...  the art - its artistic intention, its relevance and magic - is in revealing these levels of reality, making them manifest and conscious. 

I could also say, entry into this "shared imagining" is evolutionary for humans, a circumscribed engagement in group telepathy; at the very least, it opens up a temporary space for communion.

Anyway, the Idyll in performance is equivalent to some other modes of art demonstrating - or,
demon-starting (as I have it elsewhere, following my daimon) - phenomena.

The Idylls in performance and their uses/denial/phenomenology of invisibility might have resonance with one of my poems from Verb Sap, a poem also included in the 10th edition of Pearson Longman's textbook anthology of English, Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing...

Empirical / Imperial Demonstration

             The difference between

                    what is seen                                                  and what is not seen

                           what is heard                                                           and unheard

                                      what is touched                                                and intangible 

             isn't the difference between

                            what is there                                                and

                                               

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.

"Dramatic Recitation" and the Idylls form

This Friday, the collaborative and juxtaposing Murder on the Bare Stage (subject of my entry earlier this month) - in addition to providing chills and thrills, entertainment and suspense, for the weekend before Halloween - has the capability to demonstrate, highlight, and edge defining contours to the Idylls form, through comparison of similar and complementary approaches.

The show is a collaboration with actor Stephen Mead (profiled elsewhere on this blog), combining his specialty 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.

Both approaches - "Dramatic Recitation" and the Idyll form - conceive of the verbal element as essential to what live theater still has to offer uniquely, the tingly pleasure of hearing words well-spoken, fantastically-spoken, virtuosity in the delivery of charged language, towards the release in real-time of the power of words.

Murder on the Bare Stage

8pm Friday, October 26th 

at

3222 11th Street, NW

Washington, D.C. 20010

And yet, even with emphasis on the verbal as a mutual starting point for the collaboration, there's variety and illuminating contrasts between "dramatic recitation" and the "shared imagining" approach to the Idyll, as between prose and poetry, and indeed, as between storytelling and poet's theater - or a mixture of it all, contrasts, and combinations.

Here's what to expect for Friday's show, contours highlighted by what's place side by side.


 Murder on the Bare Stage

ACT I: Verse and Blood

3 Victorian Era poets
    W.S. Gilbert "Gentle Alice Brown"
    Lewis Carroll "The Walrus and the Carpenter"
    Edward Lear  5 Limericks

Idyll - "An Old Soldier Cleans his Rifle for the Last Time" 
(vide Walt Whitman)  

"The Murder of Nancy" from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.  As adapted for dramatic recitation by Dickens himself, and further adapted by Stephen Mead.
 


ACT II: How Can a Crime Be Concealed?

Idyll - "A Bandit Plots a Murder by the Road"

Macbeth/Lady Macbeth

"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

Idyll - "A Reveler Walks Home to his Family by Moonlight" 

Murder on the Bare Stage

Announcing a new show - just in time for Halloween - at Bloombars in Columbia Heights

This show combines the "Shared Imagining" approach to the Idyll and the Idyll form with actor Stephen Mead's expertise in dramatic recitation - produced in collaboration with Bloombars

Murder on the Bare Stage

Thrills! Chills! 

perfect for the Halloween Season 

Art of the Poetic Monologue/ A One-Man Show

on the theme of Murder!

A literary-poetic program combining actor Stephen Mead's specialty 

in dramatic recitations of Poe and Dickens with writer Magus Magnus' 

approach to the "Idyll" (poetic monologue designed for performance)

from his book Idylls for a Bare Stage 

Devised by Magus Magnus and Stephen Mead 

8pm, Friday October 26th at Bloombars 

starring Stephen Mead

 Spine-tingling! Enactments of Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart”

and “The Murder of Nancy” from Dickens’ Oliver Twist 

The Mindscape of a killer, and more, from Magus Magnus 

Black Humor and Bloody wit from Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, W.S. Gilbert, and More

Suggested Donation of $10 to support Bloombars and the show

Murder on the Bare Stage is a collaborative production by Bloombars  

and Magus Magnus' SiGiLPAL (Sui Generis Literary Performing Arts Lab)

 

3222 11th Street, NW

Washington, D.C. 20010

Murder on the Bare Stage

8pm Friday October 26th