I have made it to the final round of the Fulbright competition to go to Poland to study for a year with Song of the Goat (Teatr Pieśń Kozła). Here are a couple of quotes from an interview with their artistic director, Grzegorz Bral, from their UK tour of their recent Macbeth (video here):

“We are doing something very strange. If people come and see our Shakespeare, it will have nothing to do with the kind of Shakespeare they are used to. We don’t destroy the text. On the contrary we are trying to find aspects of it that are normally not used – we’re finding the musicality of it. It’s a certain vision of him, as a writer, as being like Mozart or Bach. He is a composer. He composes our feelings. Even the line ‘Which one of you have done this?’, has an incredibly powerful music.”

[…]

“Greek tragedy,” Bral reminds us, “was very much based on music. We know that there were particular notations above the words showing precisely the vocal structure and nature of the piece. The words were not just information – they had a very particular musicality. What we’re trying to do is find a musicality that speaks to us now.”

Needless to say, this all plays in rather well to all of the Greek chorus interests that I have had in my life for a long time.

Making it to the last round means there’s still paperwork to be done. Health screenings, visas, final approvals, etc., etc. But it looks as if the odds are good that I will be in Poland soon, starting late this summer, and staying for about a year.

I am grateful beyond words to everyone who made this possible for me, especially friends here in Baltimore, there in Wroclaw, and the organizers of the US Artists Initiative from the Grotowski Year 2009 of Arden2.

I remember the first time I saw TPK perform, in 2009–I knew that something was happening to me, and that I would not be able to stop myself from trying to follow these people’s work. Well, something has happened, and I am going to try. We’ll see what more happens.