It seems a good time, as Poland enters this holiday week, to say over here what I’ve already said on Facebook:

(1) the Fulbright Commission granted me a renewal, which means a second year of funding to stay in Poland, live in Łódź, and keep working with Teatr Chorea from fall 2012-summer 2013, and;

(2) fellow 2011-2012 Poland Fulbrighter Douglas Pew and I have been selected for one of the three inaugural 20-minute opera commissions in the first year of the Washington National Opera / Kennedy Center’s American Opera Initiative.

The short opera we’re going to write will premiere, along with the other two, on November 19, 2012 at the Terrace Theater at the Kennedy Center in DC. I will post more details up here when I have them.

These people have opera glasses, because they are at the opera.

I am very grateful for both these things. I’ve been very fortunate, and I couldn’t have done any of this without a great deal of support from other people. I want to say thank you, here and always, to everyone who’s helped me to get to this point. The only appropriate response seems to be this Belle and Sebastian song, “Dirty Dream Number Two,” with these opening lyrics:

I’m lucky I can open the door and I can walk down the street;
I’m lucky I’ve got no place to go, and so I follow my feet…

It’s always reminded me more than a little of “Tangled Up In Blue.” You never know when good things are going to happen, or bad things, or things, at all. You just have to go for the ride, and there’s no knowing how long it’s going to last. Thanks for coming along with me–for today, tomorrow, we’ll be back in trouble again.

two poems, both alike in…theater.

“To Maria,” online in the spring issue of Foothill.

“An Actor’s Life For Me,” in the winter paper issue of the Hopkins Review, which you can read by clicking here. The word “sounds” in the second stanza should not be on its own line, but rather, appended to the one above it. But who’s counting?

Most of you have seen most of this before, but it is nice to have these out in the world; both of them, especially the second one, have been too long a time in the braincubator.

ON TIME

Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race;
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet’s pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain…

– John Milton

(Those are just the opening lines; the whole thing is here.)

A short article I wrote about the Grotowski Institute is now in the Global Spotlight section of the March issue of American Theatre. The article won’t be posted online, but you can download a PDF of it by clicking here–or find it in the current issue of the magazine. The article’s title is “From Artists To Archives: A Grotowski Update.” It’s in a box at the bottom of the first page of the PDF.

Here’s the first paragraph:

“After 20 years in its headquarters in the historic center of Wrocław, Poland, the Grotowski Institute—devoted to continuing the practical and theoretical work of the late theatrical innovator Jerzy Grotowski—has expanded into a larger facility a few miles away on the banks of the Odra river, where rehearsals and performances alternate with workshops and programming for scholars.”

To quote the email I received from Equality California yesterday:

This morning, the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled today 2-1 that Proposition 8, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.

It’s a historic ruling–the first time in the nation’s history that a federal appeals court has struck down a statewide ban on marriage for same-sex couples.

The court’s unequivocal opinion affirmed arguments made by Equality California’s friend-of-the-court brief: “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort.”

The habit of beginning to count everything you do–as if you were always writing a formal report on your activities–is instructive, but stifling.

Since I last posted on January 15, I’ve spent twelve days traveling (more time out of Warsaw than in), conducted four interviews, seen four shows and a lecture, participated in one translation session and one theatrical collaboration, and attended services at three different synagogues in three different cities, one of which was Kraków (my first time there!).

All of this is very exciting, especially the feeling that I’m beginning to make the transition from observer to participant. However, the increased activity, especially the increased theatrical activity, has made it harder, not easier, to blog, for these reasons:

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Salutations and good afternoon from gray Warsaw, where it’s getting colder–some snow is lingering on the ground. This is part of a picture of the city center I took a couple weeks ago, in December, when my brother and his girlfriend were in town for two weeks for the holidays. Palace of Arts and Culture to the left. It’s not today, but it’s what the sky looks like. Gray.

So I’ve been working on a mid-year report for the Fulbright grant, and in the process of doing so, I compiled some statistics on what, exactly, I’ve been doing with five months of funding to live in Poland. These statistics are for September through January. In that period of time, I have:

Recorded 14 interviews with 18 theater practitioners and scholars
Published or placed 5 articles about Polish theater in 3 venues
Observed 17 rehearsals with 5 different companies
Viewed 30 performances or work showings by 22 different companies
Directed 2 workshops: one for students at a local high school, and one with friends and adult performers (a Parallel Octave poem-recording session, on a Polish poem)

I’ve also collaborated with a local translator on the idioms / Americanisms of two Polish plays he was rendering into English, and we plan to do more work of this nature in 2012.

Those are the main achievements I can report to the Commission, in terms of my progress on the research I said I was coming here to do. However, they also ask you questions about how you acclimatized to the local culture. Those things are less quantifiable, but I know, without thinking about it much, what I’m most proud of: what proves, to me, that I have begun to be less of a tourist here and more of a local.

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The article/rehearsal diary I wrote for Biweekly.pl about Chorea Theatre‘s Oratorium Dance Project is now online. Here’s a sample:

…The project was, in part, inspired by Chorea’s work with ancient Greek music, in the Grotowski-derived, Gardzienice-cultivated Polish theatre tradition. However, Krzyżanowski and Maciaszek are attempting to create something more than an adaptation of existing sources; their Oratorium drew on jazz, polyrhythms, and the sustained repetitions of post-minimalism. It was unmistakably contemporary.

Oratorium had no over-arching plot; the texts, sung in Greek and in Polish, were a collection of ancient choruses. Krzyżanowski’s choruses were from Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ Bacchae, Orestes, and Iphigenia at Aulis; Maciaszek’s were from Limenios’ paeans to the gods, including Apollo, Artemis, and Zeus. […]

[…] The cast ranged in age from 7 to 60. Many of them had never before performed professionally. Teenagers from local high schools and community organisations, including a reform school and an addiction treatment centre, young children, and adults, all took part.

You can read the whole thing here, at Biweekly, or check out some videos from the Oratorium project below:

“Allo Phoibe”:

For this next one, “Makar Hostis” and “Lythaneo”, fast-forward to about 1:30 to see one of the largest Greek choruses you’ve ever seen dancing on stage:

This project is the reason I’ve been spending so much time in Łódź.

I had to look this up recently for a friend, and BLOGGHOREA has answered the question far better than I could have. See below:

“…it is also the Brits who took it upon themselves to add a superfluous “e” to the end of “dramaturg,” thereby not only recuperating the term as British (or at least as less Teutonic), altering its very pronunciation whilst at it.”

– Mead Hunter, “Dramaturg vs. dramaturge,” Blogghorea

To summarize, dramaturg=American English, dramaturge=British.