1) Parallel Octave‘s music director Joe Martin will be interviewed on WYPR Baltimore’s The Signal tomorrow, talking about the glorious paramecium/cornucopia of short film and poetry that is ANTHOLOGY I. The Signal airs Friday at 7 PM and Saturday at 1 PM, and streams online here.
2) My friend B brought it to my attention that my poem, “The Illustration,” which I knew was going to be in URBANITE’s print edition, is also now online. I like the accompanying picture of an enormous bird.
Peter Schjeldahl in a video/slideshow on CA “Finish Fetish” minimalism: “It helps to imagine these works in Southern California light, which is soft and fierce, as opposed to New York light, which is clear and mild.”
in the current issue of Explosion-Proof. The poem, titled “Ready To Lead Stanford Into The Future?” is one of the more humorous offerings I have, and is about receiving alumni-solicitation junk mail while hung over. The magazine also has a great essay by Marina Weiss on Horace. They have a launch party tomorrow if you’re in NYC.
In other news, I have just written my first Polish composition for class. I think most Polish kindergarteners would laugh at me. (I have a brother. My brother’s name is ____. He is a computer programmer. He likes books. Etc., etc.)
In other other news, I clearly haven’t been posting the long journal-style blog entries I meant to after starting intensive Polish. It must be that I am worn out from intensive Polish. Still, if I don’t start now, it will be hopeless to blog in Poland proper. Color me resolved.
In other other other news, tomorrow is the last day for the ANTHOLOGY I ticket promotion. (Buy by June 15th and receive all kinds of glorious free Parallel Octave merch.) Our screening is July 8th at the Creative Alliance. More info here. Tickets ($10) at http://www.creativealliance.org/tickets.html or (410) 276-1651.
Events relating to Parallel Octave pre-screening planning are probably are another reason blogging has been light.
“Madame, where do you keep the poison you generally use?” said the magistrate, without any introduction, placing himself between his wife and the door.
Madame de Villefort must have experienced something of the sensation of a bird which, looking up, sees the murderous trap closing over its head. A hoarse, broken tone, which was neither a cry nor a sigh, escaped from her, while she became deadly pale. “Monsieur,” she said, “I—I do not understand you.” And, in her first paroxysm of terror, she had raised herself from the sofa, in the next, stronger very likely than the other, she fell down again on the cushions. “I asked you,” continued Villefort, in a perfectly calm tone, “where you conceal the poison by the aid of which you have killed my father-in-law, M. de Saint-Meran, my mother-in-law, Madame de Saint-Meran, Barrois, and my daughter Valentine.”
Alexandre Dumas père, The Count of Monte Cristo, (Ch. 108: The Judge)
Well. I have graduated; I have left Baltimore; I have made it to Pittsburgh, for intensive Polish language school. I will be here for the next 6 weeks.
I took the train from Baltimore on Thursday. I have been here about 24 hours (of which most have been spent asleep) and am now going to Target for everything I forgot. I am going to take a bus over a river.
I am working on a longer blog/journal post for tomorrow or Monday, in a new format I want to use in Poland, of about a week’s worth of journal entries per post. For the moment, here’s some Dumas (up next), and I hope you are all having an excellent weekend.
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.
I will be delivering a lecture on the Hopkins campus on Tuesday. Here’s the information:
Spring 2011 Lattman Lecture Seminar
Tuesday, April 5
5:30 PM
Maryland 110, Johns Hopkins University
Dara Weinberg, Writing Seminars Department
Performing the Greek Chorus: A Focus on Polish Theater Practices
The choruses in the ancient Greek plays are notoriously problematic to stage. Directors, pressed for time, are often forced to shorten or cut these texts. A Polish theater company, Teatr Pieśń Kozła (Song of the Goat), has developed new, more effective techniques for approaching Greek choruses in rehearsal—physical and vocal exercises to increase the actor’s awareness of the ensemble. This presentation will address how Pieśń Kozła’s innovations can be applied to the problems faced in performing the Greek chorus, discuss the results of two case studies conducted with actors from the Single Carrot Theatre in Baltimore, and examine to what extent Polish rehearsal methods are practical for theaters in the United States.
since I posted here, or since I was sitting in Portland’s Union Station, waiting for a train to Seattle.
I’ve spent spring break in the Northwest–Ashland, Klamath Falls, Portland, and now further north. I’ve seen a lot of friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in three or four years. If they would install that portal between Baltimore and Portland, it would make matters much more convenient.
I’ll spend the next few days with family in Seattle and then return to Baltimore, and to Hopkins, for the last months of the poetry MFA. I graduate in May.
Dara Weinberg 