Category Archives: Poland

poetry, Poland, self-blogerential

I can haz poem

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.

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Poland, the chorus

Greek chorus & Polish theater

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.

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Baltimore, Poland, the chorus

(carriage) return

I have returned from a week in Wroclaw, Poland, taking a theater workshop with Piesn Kosla (Song of the Goat) and am getting back into the swing of things here on campus–teaching, seminar, making final revisions to essays for a grant. Today is my third day back and the jet-lag is finally fading a bit.

I owe a great many people a great many phone calls, a situation complicated by falling asleep at 5 pm Eastern.

The theater workshop itself was extraordinary. I have a lot to say about it. I’m working on an account of the trip, which I hope to finish this week, while the memories are still recent.

The travel back from Poland to the US was no less extraordinary, but not in a good way–I managed to miss both a train and my flight, and have to rebook.

But I’m here now. It’s very good to be back. Baltimore has never looked so beautiful, and there’s nothing to make you appreciate Southern politeness, and the “how are you”s and door-holding-opens at every turn, like 24 hours stuck in Warsaw central station.

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Poland, the chorus, theater

almost ready

to leave, but not quite.

I’m getting on a plane to Berlin tomorrow, and from there, a train to Wroclaw, for a week-long workshop with Song of the Goat. I’ll be back on the 20th. I won’t have phone or reliable Internet until then. I’ll put something up here, however, when I return.

To be continued.

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Baltimore, F&F, Poland, the chorus

word for word

(1) There is nothing like a dishwasher full of wine glasses to remind you that last night was good. Yesterday, we had a party for the return of C and D from their recent marriage.

(2) I was in DC today, meeting up with JK. Haven’t seen her since Wroclaw last year. We had breakfast in the mall by the Pentagon City Ritz Carlton, surrounded by hundreds of American star-striped banners, and then I spent some time in her hotel room reading various theatrical papers she had — an introduction to an anthology of new Turkish plays, an advertisement for the Polish Theatre Perspectives journal, a prospectus for a dance festival in Poznan and elsewhere.

The materials she had with her were so pertinent to my current chorus interests that, at one point, I stopped and copied out an entire article, word for word, in my journal. I’m not certain what part of it is actually the most important, or what I will need to go back to, but I didn’t want to miss reading a word of it.

I must go back to Wroclaw soon.

(3) (Bloomsday readings from Ulysses at the James Joyce this evening.)

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art, Poland

I’m not moving to Warsaw!

Amazing Rachel has a new collaborative art project, called I’M NOT MOVING TO WARSAW, and she needs YOU!
You can participate at their site by answering these questions:

Co jutro? | Define tomorrow.
Opisz swój sen. | Describe a dream you remember.
Dlaczego jesteś tu gdzie jesteś? | Why are you where you are?

and emailing your responses, along with the name, real or pseudonymous, that you want to be known by, to imnotmovingtowarsaw @ gmail.com. It’s fun.

They are going to make some kind of magic out of all the answers.

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Poland, theater

all’s well that ends well

The US Artist Initiative is over – the blog will continue to exist as an archive of interviews conducted with all the participants each year, but won’t have daily updates.

I return to Chicago tomorrow, and then have just a few days there before moving to Baltimore. Today is a free day for me in Wroclaw. I’m going to wander around and see what there is to see that isn’t theater.

My roommates and I are packed, sitting in our living room discussing politics. It will be strange not to live with them any more – it’s been almost a month. One is on her way to Minneapolis, then Istanbul, the other to New Jersey. I don’t know when I’ll see them again, although being on the East Coast gives me hope that I can keep in touch.

This trip has been – this trip has been. It just has.

I think I’ll know more about what its impact has been on me a few years from now. I don’t know now. I know I am returning to the US with B’s Polish-English dictionary in my backpack.

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Poland

polandering

Raindrops so small that you can’t even feel them in your hair in the day, and thunder every night, so loud it sounds like Zar breaking glasses before GOSPELS OF CHILDHOOD. But the thunder doesn’t always mean it rains for long.

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