Starting off the New Year

Looking forward to activities in 2012, some focus going to Baltimore right now, home base of Idylls publisher twentythreebooks.  Performances in development there for April.  I'll keep this blog updated as to details.

Meanwhile, for in-store browsing and buying in D.C., Capitol Hill's BackStage Books - a key source in our area for theater books, costumes, and supplies - now carries Idylls for a Bare Stage.

Go in at the following location or call ahead to reserve your copy (and while you're at it, pick up a mask or face paint for yourself or the kids - Mardi Gras is next around the corner, and then Purim!)

Backstage, Inc.

The Performing Arts Store

545 8th Street, SE 

Washington, DC 20003
Phone: (202) 544-5744

Participants in the thriving theater community of D.C., should they go to BackStage and flip through the pages, will notice that Idylls for a Bare Stage - as book, play, and specialized form for theatre - is a three-in-one offering relevant to their own engagement in contemporary performing arts:

1, as a book, just out from a Baltimore-based independent publisher, poetry for poetry readers / poetic monologues for the auditioning actor - juicy, challenging, skills-showcasing monologues.

2, as a play, for production by theater companies, troupes, or individual performers, either in part (with individual scenes or "idylls") or as a whole.

And 3, as a new - an old-new - theory and practice for theatre:  through the ancient form of the "idyll," reinvented by poet and playwright Magus Magnus, monologue becomes theatre in and of itself, easy to mount, capable of being performed almost anywhere.

Especially for the actor...   just as much as these are monologues useful for auditioning, the book's overall concept actually encourages a turning of the audition monologue on its head, providing the means for a showcase of his or her skills through the art of the Idyll - poetic monologues designed for performance - thereby affirming the actor as an individual artist, as self-determining as the poet, the painter, and the musician / songwriter.

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.

twentythreebooks publisher Doug Mowbray documents Idylls launch

 November 20th, Idylls Show at the Athenaeum in Alexandria

http://www.nvfaa.org/

 I'll post highlights over the next little while, but you can check out a slew of pics directly from publisher Douglas Mowbray at the following links for the Cruellest Month website and Flickr:


http://crumopoperfest.blogspot.com/2011/11/idylls-show-and-launch-party.html?spref=fb

http://www.flickr.com/photos/buddhakowski/sets/72157628162249269/with/6392465665/


and don't forget the twentythreebooks website itself:

http://twentythreebooks.com/


all best from M.

Coming Soon - pics and more, from November 20th

Great times and excellent performances for the launch last weekend...   I'll post pics, and such, asap.

Enjoying the thanksgiving holiday and R&R.


Thanks to all who made it happen, and to all who came out on a Sunday night and made it a full house, great charge throughout the evening.

M.

Tonight: Idylls Show and launch party!

Performances, music, refreshments 

...including a wine tasting (funny thing happened on the way to Virginia's ABC Banquet license: the standard temporary liquor's license wasn't available to us, but we were offered a "tasting license" - so this adds another element to the evening, for sampling of wines and idylls...  )

TONIGHT!

 

Enter the Mindscape of 

a Sorceress and a Saint, a Horse and a Captive Woman

A Mother feeling her estranged daughter's labor pains 

Antigone burying her brother's body

Palamedes (inventor of numbers, alphabets and lighthouses)

and Leda (after the swan)

and more 

Featuring Actors’ Center performers:  Margaret Anthony, Genna Davidson, Carol McCaffrey, Kimberly Mikec, Rachel Morrissey, Paul Morton, Harlie Sponaugle, and Sue Struve.

Musical Guest: Old Songs, with Mark Jickling, Chris Mason,  Rebby Sharp, and David Brumbaugh.  Songs from Hipponax.

The show will begin soon after the 7pm arrival time;  please arrive on time so that you won't miss any of the performances.

See right side panel for venue address and map


And for those of you taking public transportation: closest stop to the Athenaeum is the King Street Metro stop in Alexandria. Walk down King Street (1.1 mi) turning right onto S. Fairfax then Left onto N. Prince. You can also take a free dashbus that travels every 20 minutes from the King Street Metro Station towards the Potomac River waterfront from 11:30 am until 10 pm, and stops at the corner of King and Lee Streets.The Athenaeum is located one block south, at the corner of South Lee and Prince Streets.


Looking forward to seeing you there.

M.

Performer Profile: Paul Morton

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

Paul Morton - "Palamedes" in the Idylls

    The Palamedes Idyll is one of four original compositions in Idylls for a Bare Stage, although the only one to be performed Sunday night (the rest having some relation to source texts).  Still, I can't say it's "wholly" original - going beyond the philosophical difficulty in saying that about anything.  Although the piece doesn't jump off from or follow another specific source, trace materials about this mythic inventor, this great Greek originator, seeded the inspiration... mythic facts, such as the detail that Palamedes - like Heracles, Jason, Ajax, and Achilles - was a pupil of Chiron the Centaur.

     It quickly became clear Paul had the tools to take on Palamedes:  rich voice, instinct, understanding.

     Yet, it is his free-wheeling process that takes him into the part.  Plowing, plunging.  It reminds me of the first thing I watched him do, during that Actors' Center workshop developing the techniques of the Idyll/poetic monologue, when one of our exercises triggered in him an instant persona for the piece at hand:  suddenly, he had an appropriate accent for the part, and the right tone and pacing to take him all the way through the scene - basically, it was performance-ready immediately, albeit in so far as what it was on book. 

     For the Palamedes Idyll, the complications of its rhythms between the abstract and the personal, between pristine mind and messy human endeavor, between analytic science and irreducible awe make it somewhat more involving for any actor.  Paul's free-wheeling plunging with each rehearsal took him powerfully into it, passes by turns led on or driven by the text; he kept everything loose with pass after pass at it, each a deepening, "knocking it out" as he calls it, each pass an incorporating, soon to find the character, soon to find the voice, then soon to find the thoughts, into the life of Palamedes, into what was Palamedes and was now his, Paul's.  So stick around - he'll knock you out with his Palamedes constituting the finale for Sunday's show.

     Paul Morton is an actor and lifetime resident of Alexandria.  Stage shows performed in include Fences, Hair, Taming of the Shrew, Lysistrata, Of Mice and Men, Romeo and Juliet, Comedy of Errors, Native Son, The Music Man, Victor/Victoria, Teahouse of the August Moon, The Curious Savage, The Crawlspace Waltz, The Christmas Carol, Intimate Apparel, and The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia.  He is also an actor of commercials, educational videos, and industrials.

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.

---

"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)