Night Number 2 of SPT's Poets Theater

Feeling generally low-energy and fighting the beginning-of-the-quarter cold, I missed the first night of Small Press Traffic's 13th Annual Poets Theater; however, all reports indicate it was SOLD OUT out and a fabulous event. I can vouch for the fact that this was so on night number two as well. The theater at CounterPulse was packed and there was so much body heat I was tempted to take off my new gold sweater. I was sweltering.

But the heat couldn't detract from the great pleasure of Kevin Killian's direction of the fabulous "In a Word, Faust," a play in two parts, by Ish Klein.

"Klein reduces Geothe's five act tragedy to twenty minutes by the simple expedient of reducing every speech to one word. Faust, a knowledge seeker, sells his soul to the devil in order to win knowledge no man was supposed to possess, and to have the world's most beautiful woman (Helen of Troy). So what's the downside? Fourteen artists, poets, scholars and novelists play parts human, divine and satanic in this probing farce" (program).

Jordan Essoe as Faust
Photo by Camille Roy

Jordan Essoe played the part of Faust. That man is blessed with amazing cheek bones and his cape accentuated his imposing stature. The rest of the excellent cast included:

Matthew Gordon as Wagner, His Secretary, Robbie Dewhurst as Casper, A Traveling Genius, Joe Bly as Mexico, Johnny Drago as Auerhahn, Nicholas Andre Sung as Vitzliputzli, Jack Frost as Alesko, Cliff Hengst as Mephistopheles, Ian Heames as Berlicke, an Infernal Spirit, Steve Orth as Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, Norma Cole as Blanca, his bride, Tom Allen as Orestes, his councilor, Dodie Bellamy as Genius, a supernatural spirit, Lindsey Boldt as Helen, Trojan Beauty.

 Norma Cole, Lindsey Boldt, and Dodie Bellamy were luminous; Cliff Hengst is always a force with great timing. In each of his several performances over the course of the night, Steve Orth was in his element.

Brent Cunningham recruited actors from the audience minutes before each of his "Standard Stoppages:
#1: The Poet Suicides
#2 Great Puppets of the Middle Ages
#3 Panel! Panel! Panel!

The Stoppages were alternated with other plays, including:

Mary Burger and Yedda Morrison's "Un/Conventional Chorus," a play "featuring some common native and exotic plant species found in Glen Canyon Park, exploring the intersections of botany, politics, history, naming, and pollen (program). The Cast included: Mary Burger, Beth Murray, Aja Duncan, Nicole Trigg, Tanya Hollis, Wendy Kramer, Chet Weiner, Mari Collings & Jocelyn Saidenberg.

Tanya Hollis and Beth Murray in "Un/ConventionalChorus"
Photo by Camille Roy

"The Voice Reconfigured as Event as Spatial-Temporal Gesture: A Proposal" written by Avra Spector and directed by Avra and Ecan Schnair is "based on NBC's reality singing competition the Voice. This version sees three punctuation marks blind audition in hopes of getting an astute writer to turn around. At stake is being signed to a most prized and lauded prose block and a chance at superstardom. As the writer tires and the punctuations start playing dirty, the whole audition process is thrown asunder" (program).

Lastly, but not least, "Escape From Century Hills" written and directed by Lindsey Boldt and Steve Orth takes place "fifty years in the future. A group of experimental poets in the winter of their lives find themselves in a retirement home. A young poet come to visit eager to learn from them and 'make connections.' The elders are less concerned with posterity than bustin' outta the big house" (program). The cast included Steve Orth, Lindsey Boldt, Sara Larsen, Kevin Killian.  This team clearly had great fun working on this production!

Kevin Killian, Steve Orth, Lindsey Boldt, Sara Larsen in "Escape from Century Hills"
Photo by Camille Roy

Here's one of Brent Cunningham's entertaining Standard Stoppages:

Standard Stoppage #3:  Panel! Panel! Panel!

by Brent Cunningham

Cast:  Moderator, Panelist, Questioner #1, Questioner #2

[Play opens with a standard academic “panel” set up: table, chairs, a Moderator, and a Panelist. Questioners are in the actual audience.  All actors are welcome to ad lib on the basic structure.]

The Moderator generally speaks only the following six words: “Greet,” “Sum,” “Defer,” “Discomfort,” “Deflection,” and “Valediction.”  Repetitions of “Greet” at the start of the play give way to “Sum” then to “Defer” as the Moderator introduces the Panelist.  

After they are introduced, the Panelist reads the following paper:

Jargon jargon jargon jargon jargon jargon jargon.  Jargon jargon.  Jargon jargon jargon.  Cite cite cite. Jargon jargon. Cite. Jargon.  Cite cite cite.  Jargon jargon.  Jargon jargon jargon jargon.  Cite cite cite cite cite cite cite cite.  Jargon jargon jargon jargon.  Jargon.  Jargon.

Of course it’s much more complicated than that.  Further, complications to these complications are complicated by the complications of their own smaller complications, which in turn are complicated by complicating the complications within which the complications are in the first instance complicated.  Complicating the complications are the complicated complications of the complicated.  Complicated complicated. Moreover, the complicated complications are complicated by the complications to which the complications complicate the complicated complications.  Complicate, complicate, complicate.   In short, it’s complicated.

[As if spoken, not reading.] 

Side point that sounds spontaneous but which in fact I worked on very hard.  Side point that sounds spontaneous but which in fact I worked on very hard.  Side point that sounds spontaneous but which in fact I worked on very hard.  Side point that sounds spontaneous but which in fact I worked on very hard.  [Returns to reading.]

Jargon jargon jargon jargon.  Jargon jargon jargon.  Cite cite cite. Jargon jargon. Cite cite cite cite.  

In the final analysis, let’s not bicker and argue over whether my right ideas are right.  Indeed, let’s not bicker and argue over whether my right ideas are right.  As I have shown, bickering and arguing over whether my right ideas are right leads nowhere.  Rather, and this is my essential point, let’s not bicker and argue over whether my right ideas are right. In conclusion, let’s not bicker and argue over whether my right ideas are right.

After the Panelist finishes, there is light applause.  Moderator uses mixture of “Sum” and “Defer.”  Moderator may then signal beginning of Q and A by asking “Are there any questions?”  

Questioner #1 repeats the following sentence 4 or 5 times, ending with a high rising terminal (“question” intonation) on the last repetition of the sentence:  “I wasn’t really listening but was instead thinking about how to formulate this question.”

In response, Panelist answers by repeating “Polite bewilderment” 10 or 12 times.  Then repeats “Reiteration of points previously made” 6 or 7 times.

Moderator asks if there are more questions.

Questioner #2 repeats the following sentence 4 or 5 times, ending with a high rising terminal (“question” intonation) on the last repetition: “Challenge not just to the points made, but to the undergirding social structure that enabled the points to be made and indeed to the universe as a whole.”  

In response, Panelist answers by repeating “This is not the time or place” 10 or 12 times.  Then says, “Besides,” and repeats the following 5 or 6 times: “personal revelation intended as an anecdote but a little too revealing of deep perversity.”

End of Q andA the Moderator repeats “Discomfort,” then “Deflection,” then “Sum,” then “Valediction” until curtain. 

Annual Small Press Traffic Poets Theater Fest at CounterPulse Jan 18th & 19th

Don't let it pass you by!   Once again it is time for the San Francisco and Small Press Traffic tradition of Poets Theater.

This year's events will once again be held at CounterPulse, 1310 Mission Street, at Ninth.  Tickets: $20 online and $25 at the door.  Buy your tickets in advance here:

Norma Cole & Jocelyn Saidenberg in the 2009
"A Mummer's Play" by Vanessa Place

Here's the line-up!   See you there.

Friday January 18th at 7:30pm for:

+Of Our Lives written and directed by Jen Currin

+Teenage Kicks written and directed by Zoe Tuck and Amy Berkowitz

+The Edict of Nancy written by Dorothy Trujillo Lusk and directed by Dillon Westbrook

+A Day at the Races written by Julie Lythcott-Haims and directed by Brandon Jackson

+ Poets Therapy written and directed by Kate Robinson

+Conduction in the Catacombs written by Will Alexander and directed by Sara Larsen


 Saturday January 19th at 7:30pm :
+Perscriptive Love written by Stan Apps

+Chorus of Plants written and directed by Mary Burger and Yedda Morrison

+Escape from Century Hills written and directed by Lindsey Boldt and Steve Orth

+In a Word, Faust written by Ish Klein and directed by Kevin Killian

+The Voice Reconfigured as Event as Spacial written and directed by Avra Spector

+Three Standard Stoppages written and directed by Brent Cunningham


Read previous xpoetics posts on Poets Theater events:

2009

2010--Evening Two
2010--Evening One

2011

2012

Nick Robinson's Notes on Poets Theater from 2007 

Of course, you should also check out Kevin Killian and David Brazil's editing of The Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater 1945-1985. You can buy it at Small Press Distribution here.

Poets Theater at SPT: Evening One

Small Press Traffic held its annual Poets Theater fête in a new location at Counterpulse, a truly professional and fabulous experimental performance space on Market near 9th Street. On Sunday afternoon, the theater was packed to the rafters, all seats taken and people on the floor. The event started fashionably late as Samantha Giles, Sara Wintz, Lauren Shufran and Camille Roy, all SPT board members, performed their introduction to the evening as a  mock meeting.



Samantha Giles and Michael Cross



Then Paul Ebenkamp's "You Have to Take Care of My Work Together" emerged as the afternoon's curtain-raiser, with a number of audience members calling out lines in the dark: "My kid could have done this"; "Could my kid have done this?"; "Did I do this?" "Did I have my kid do this?" etc.

Next up Bob Glück and Jocelyn Saidenberg's "Precious Princess, or, Pig Speak" included David Brazil as Sleeping Beauty who has lost her head, but wears a finger crown; and Yedda Morrison was a sock monkey, Brandon Brown, Balso the Knight, and Michelle Ty as the longed for Precious Princess who emerges out of Sleeping Beauty's freshly laid giant pink egg. (Jocelyn tells me that both this exquisite pink egg and Sleeping Beauty's finger were crafted by Bob Glück.) This Precious Princess turns out to be a Precious Pig who wants to roll in the eternal mud and forge a kind of pigology at the intersection of poetry and philosophy. Silly and fun, this play had a kind of tea flower at the center. I've seen pictures of them, those balls in hot water in a clear tea pot; they bloom and look like some underwater anemone.

David Brazil, a departing Brandon Brown, and Paul Ebenkamp

Here are some excerpts:

Balso: Sleeping Beauty, are you going to have a beautiful baby?


Sleeping Beauty: Yes, yes. I am going to have a precious princess. I am going to call her Precious Princess. She is going to be my precious beautiful baby.


Balso: Precious Princess? That’s a lot of p’s.


Sleeping Beauty: Oh, Oh, Oh, I think I am having my baby right now—here she comes! I can feel her moving inside of me. She is coming out, here she comes!


(Sleeping Beauty lifts up the egg.)


Balso: Wow, Sleeping Beauty. I have never seen such a big egg. You may not have a head, but you have a big pink egg to hatch.


Sleeping Beauty: Now we have to wait for my egg to crack. I am so excited! My precious princess is in my egg!


************
Precious Pig: If you are Balso the Knight, where is your nest?




Sleeping Beauty: PIG child, where DO all your questions come from?


Precious Pig: My pink precious pig pate possibly.


Balso: Your pretty piggy piercing porcine patter pleasing platoons of paparazzi?


Monkey: So says simpering saccharine suppurating soullessly slushy susurrating simpletons!


Sleeping Beauty (indignant): Easy for YOU to say!


Precious Pig: Since I was born with a head, let’s begin my education.


Balso: Oh, er, where to start?


Precious Pig: Philosophy!


Balso: The origins of meaning, of space and time. We can call it, Pigology.


Sleeping Beauty: No, no, Precious Pig, I want you to grow up to fan yourself, wear my 12,000 hats, and put your napkin in your lap.


Precious Pig: Royal Mother, I want to learn about caves and shadows, but more than that, I want to roll in the eternal mud.


Sleeping Beauty: You mean poetry? Let’s have an elegant salon. Does anyone have a potted palm? There’s nothing like a potted palm for culture.


**********
from the close of the play, spoken by the Sock Monkey:

You think YOU’VE written a play! You think YOU’RE in a play! You think YOU are YOU!!!!  I have written, directed and starred in the movie version, play version, novel version, opera version, torch song version--you name it!   I invented plays--and Pigology, before there were even pigs or even lologies.  Jeez.  I am all versions, my middle name is VARIANCE.  Monkey Variarum Monkey, to be precisely Latinate.  In Monkey where Monkeys make more Monkey and nothing more, Trippy!  The critics made a big fuss when I starred in Titus Monkonicus, and when I was shot out of a cannon in Monkeys on Parade.  (He speaks in Sleeping Beauty’s voice.)  “This is the very limit of anything that we ever saw or wanted to see or even could imagine.”  (sings) Monkeys, on Parade!  Talking ‘bout Monkeys on Parade.  Hand to hand combat, death and desire, we all just want to be shot out of a cannon by one of our own kind.  That is, I created the universe for me!  I AM the expanding logic of the Empire, but take it from me, Sleeping Beauty, I am also the ambiguity that rules the depths. 


Yedda Morrison

In "The Morton Salt Girl Monologue: NaCl and the Meaning of Her Mark," Wendy Kramer, clad in a yellow slip of a dress and yellow wig, wore white tights and occasionally took up her umbrella as she shared the stage with projections of her collages based on the Morton Salt girl. This piece was astonishing. "It is quiet here under the weather" began Kramer. I loved how Wendy's passion for collage and archival sleuthing met performance in her exploration of how "my mineral morphs into meaning." Quiet and stark with its reference to "dry-eyed tears of industry," Kramer's piece hung in the air, a vibrato in the midst of so much raucousness.

You can see Wendy's collages at her blog.

Here are some excerpts from "The Morton Salt Girl":

The water draws down, the salt falls away like breadcrumbs behind. “When it rains it pours.”

[Rain crescendos a little. MSG steps out, left foot first, and walks to music stand. She faces front, taking
a 1914-girl stance, with both feet forward. Rain dies down and stops.]

There is a self-help book that says, “Where there is loss, there will be sadness, and where there is
sadness there will be tears.” The girl might add: There will be salt in those tears, and anti-caking
compounds to keep the cubic crystals flowing.

.......
and the play closes with:

MSG [turning back to the audience]: They will tell you that the salt is raked from desert beds, or
vacuum evaporated and panned from soaking seas, or mined as rock from the earth-crust; but it comes
from me, as I eke out this living. The organ pressure towards import hurts-- natron preserved the
ancient Egyptian dead; sodium chloride intimates our vitals.

From a negative adage “It never rains but it pours” to a positive advertisement for housekeep
manufacture (you've heard it), my mineral morphs into meaning. Cation plus anion minus frustration
with the present interrupted by the past... eyes downcast... abstracted, pensive, forensic...I look at you, I
look askance...I seek my solution.


[Rain resumes quietly. Screen projects 1968 salt girl in shadow profile with NaCl molecule(image 4).
Exit MSG. Pause 3 seconds. Screen goes blank.]

Wendy Kramer as The Morton Salt Girl

Ronald Palmer, Cynthia Sailers, and Stephanie Young's "Utopia and Other Drugs: Tale of a Pharma-whore," was directed by Brent Cunningham and featured Young as a patient, Palmer as a drug company rep and Kelsa Trom as a therapist. Everyone is looking for an eternal hard-on in this play and the orgasms never stop coming while Jean Genet, Judith Butler and others drop by.

Lindsey Boldt and Steve Orth's "Dating by Consensus" rounded out the first half of the evening. In this witty and humorous play, Boldt and Orth are on a first date, but this date proceeds according to consensus, as if the two were at an Occupy General Assembly meeting: there is an agenda, hand signals, and a third-party arbitrator who also takes notes. Even the waiter has to wait his turn to speak. Boldt's character professes her solidarity with the waiter because "I worked in a coffee shop for six months before going to Sarah Lawrence."

"Dating by Consensus" Steve Orth, Jennifer Manzano & Lindsey Boldt

You can watch Andrew Kenower's video of "Dating by Consensus" here:

I hated to leave at Intermission, but had to. I am willing to bet the second half of the evening was just a satisfying!

Here's the full line-up and the promise for next Sunday:
+Idioterne by Joseph Kaplan and directed by Zach Tuck

+Time’s Machinery; or the Stopwatch written and directed by Brent Cunningham
+Theater (a Thousand Plateaus) written by Kieran Daly and directed by Sara Wintz
+Dating by Consensus written and directed by Lindsey Boldt and Steve Orth
+ You Have to Take Care of My Work Together written and directed by Paul Ebenkamp
+Precious Princess or PIG Speak written and directed by Bob Gluck and Jocelyn Saidenberg
+Utopia and Other Drugs written by Ronald Palmer, Cynthia Sailers and Stephanie Young and directed by Brent Cunningham
+Barber Shop or Butch Realness Meets Real Butchness written by Ryan B. Funk and directed by Kevin Killian
+The Morton Sal Girl Monologue: NaCl and the Meaning of Her Mark written and directed by Wendy Kramer


And then come back on Sunday January 22nd at 5:00pm for :
+Transient’s Theme: a soap operatic etude written and directed by Bethany Ides
+Debt Play written and directed by Lauren Levin, Laura Woltag, Lara Durback, Melissa Mack, Anne Lesley Selcer and Tony Valadez
+Lycanthropes, loup garoux, 28 nov, lean and mean written and directed by C.S. Giscombe
+Charles Baudelaire the Vampire Slayer written by Brandon Brown and directed by Clive Worsley
+One More Time: a play in parts written by Edwin Torres and directed by Sophie Reiff
+BUCKSHOT: A RASHOMON written by Brian Bauman and directed by Kevin Killian
+Werther Live, On the Radio written by Gail Scott and directed by Monica Peck
+What She Said written by Rodney Koeneke and George Albon directed by Lauren Shufran













10th Annual Poets Theater Performances at Small Press Traffic

This weekend Small Press Traffic held it's Tenth Annual Poets Theater event.  While the dailiness of daily life and an attempt to put the lid on a cold kept me away from Friday night's events, I had the pleasure of selling tickets, pouring drinks, and enjoying the second evening's dynamic selection of performances. 

But first, here's the line-up for Friday January 28th:

ACT ONE

Episode One from "Feel Your Media--Bitch"
(four episodes for SPT Poets Theater 2011)
Written by Rodrigo Toscano
Directed by Sara Larsen & David Brazil
with technical assistance by Andrew Kenower
Featuring David Brazil (D), Sara Larsen (S), Taylor Brady (X), Erin Morril (Y), Zack tuck (Z)

"You wanna see Cultural Marketers--doing it?"

Draft 101: Puppet Opera
Written by Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Directed by Lara Durback
with technical assistance by Lauren Shufran
Featuring Green Box (Marcel Duchamp), Alex Cruse/Kate Robinson (Hung/Suspend Woman), Leah Clark/Lara Durback (Another Puppet, Male), Loretta Clodfelter/Kate Robinsno (Lights)

Perhaps make
a hinge
picture.
(folding yardstick, book...)
develop
the principle of hinge
in the displacements
1st in the plane 2nd in space

find an automatic description
of the hings
___________________________________
perhaps introduce it
in the hung/suspended woman  ---Marcel Duchamp

Episode Two: "Feel Your Media-- Bitch"

INTERMISSION

ACT TWO
If You want to See Flying Go to the Circus

Written and directed by Brent Cunningham

The actors for this improvisatory play will be selected from the audience at the start of the evening by a chance procedure. It features plays-within-plays stacked like Russian nesting dolls. In the end, everyone dies.

Episode Three: "Feel Your Media--Bitch"

I Can See You but I Know You're There
Written and directed by Tom Comitta and Steven Trull
Featuring Samantha Boudrot, Ashley Brim, Tom Comitta, Jessamyn Cuneo, Paul Montes, Reece McGowen, Antonio Iannarone and Steven Trull

Timken is to Timpani as________is to________.


Episode Four: "Feel Your Media--Bitch"

Tell Only One
Written and directed by Corina Copp
featuring Corina Copp, Julia Jarcho, and Jacqueline Waters

Goethe wrote, "Tell it to no one, tell it only to the wise"--an admonition of sorts that is repeated via letters from squirrels to two doomed lovers in Ingeborg Bachmann's radio drama, "The Good God of Manhattan" (1958). This piece, "Tell Only One," should look like a curtain splashed in mauve variations and described many times, eventually uncovering a singular, bare face that is wise, if wise means hoping we won't expect it, it being what faces tell when they are reading messages that say don't tell anyone.

I believe that Carol Mirakove and Jen Benka provided crazy antics before the plays and at intermission!

On Saturday evening, January 29th, we were treated to the following:

ACT ONE

Ascidian Play
written by Laynie Browne
and directed by Erin Morrill
featuring Stephanie Young (Ascidian A),  Bill Luoma (Ascidian B), Davide Brazil (Ascidian C), Lindsey Bolt (Ascidian 1), Kevin Killian (Richard Foreman), Erin Morrill (Director of Play), Brandon Brown (Ernst Haeckel), Taylor Brady (Charles Darwin), Stacy Doris (Gertrude Stein), Erin Wilson (Seastar) and surprise guests! (one of whom was Denise Newman as a crab.)

Ascidian Play chronicles the existential preoccupations of three larval Ascidians contemplating what type of Ascidians they will become as they mature. This play is one in a collection of plays about the misadventures of marine invertebrates called Invertebrate Plays.

"Remember, we're still larval, be careful what you say!"

This play was finely staged with hippy VW bus-driving-guppy-gurgling larvae on the road.

The Photographers Photo Detritus Without a Camera
Written and directed by Ariel Goldberg
This is all for Sale with models Jackqueline Frost, Ted Rees, Matt Runkle, and Cassie Thornton

Immerse yourself in a fusion lecture liquidation of accessories that keep cameras and pictures flowing rapidly. What do photo objects become when accumulated and outdated--what do you become owning these objects?

The Salesperson/Models did the runway strut with their unwieldy collections of frames, packaging and other photographic detritus while Goldberg narrated the story of these materials. On screen, a slideshow. Remember, this is all for sale!

Ambergris Desktop Vocalist
Written and Directed by Christine Choi and Drew Fernando

This piece called for audience participation--prompts provided on-screen via the old-fashioned (!) technology of the overhead projector, drinks were requested and proffered, sonic pleasures and narrations passed back and forth.

INTERMISSION

Antics abounded: Zack Tuck provided tarot readings, (alas, I didn't have a chance to have my done!) and the lovely duo of Samantha Giles and Stephanie Young performed on-request interpretive dances, more like friezes, from various movies--Heathers, Flashdance, Annie Hall, etc. Food and drink.

ACT TWO

Lycanthropes/Entre Chien et Loup
written and directed by C.S. Giscombe
featuring Madison Hardy (as Marcella), Ryan Schaefer, George Spelvin, and Emmar Tome. Music by Anthony Bellow. Based on a true story.

From Naked Translations: "Entre chien et loup is a multi-layered expression. It is used to describe a specific time of day, just before night, when the light is so dim you can't distinguish a dog from a wolf. However, it's not all about levels of light. It also expresses that limit between the familiar, the comfortable versus the unknown and the dangerous (or between the domestic and the wild). It is an uncertain threshold between hope and fear."

Cecil's play featured excellent wolf masks and great atmosphere. Marcella, a white girl, had stories to tell, questions to ask, issues of race and gender to probe, while the wolves prowled and paced about a park-like setting (a park bench on stage). One of the wolves played a guitar and sang. A hapless, monotone man happens upon the scene and there is screaming. Loved it.

I Confess! An Adaptation of the Confessions of Saint Augustine
written and directed by David Brazil and Evan Kennedy
Costume Designer for Ms. Bellamy (who played an angel decked out in wings and halo courtesy of a shower head, pole, and toiletry container/apparatus ): Matt Gordon

featuring David Brazil (Good Augustine), Evan Kennedy (Bad Augustine), Monica Peck (Monica his mother), Lidsey Boldt, Jack Frost, Jenn Hoff, Erin Morill, Steve Orth, Ted Rees, John Sakkis (The Eversores), Taylor Brady (Pear Tree, Fig Tree), Ted Rees (Bishop), Brandon Brown (Alypius, Augustine's closest friend), Brent Cunningham (Faustus, a Manichee), Kevin Killian (Ambrose, Bishop of Milan), Bob Gluck (Ponticianus) and Dodie Bellamy (Continency, an angel).

An aging saint recounts his past life as a debauchee. Dramatic accompaniment will honor the chronology through its greatest hists: Infancy! The infamous pear theft from adolescence! Screwing around with a crew of horny debauchees! The life-altering break from the weirdo cult of Manichees! The caress of saving grace from Ambrose! A celestial vision and garden conversion! The death of a mother!

This play was a delight--the writing both funny and beautiful. The ensemble of actors really fed off of one another. I've just written a little short thing about Augustine's Confessions so it was fun to see what David did with the material. Brazil narrated Augustine's life while Kennedy in silver sneakers was dazzling as the Bad Augustine. Lindsey Boldt and others a great punky band of debauchees! Cunningham an excellent Manichean. Gluck a fabulously ponderous Ponticianus.

Poets Theater--always a fun evening out. Why would anyone miss it!

Travelling with Leslie Scalapino: Flow--(Winged Crocodile) / The Trains

In Celebration of the late Leslie Scalapino:  Flow--(Winged Crocodile) / The Trains



On November 16, 2010 The Belladonna Collaborative will present for the first time in its entirety Flow--(Winged Crocodile) /The Trains. Scalapino's play travels between the left and right sides of the brain, with appearances by a reincarnated Patty Hearst in the 1974 SLA bank heist and a green-winged creature that is part crocodile, part Michelin man and part charging rhino. Scalapino (1944-2010) was the author of thirty books of poetry, poem-plays, essays, and fiction.





Tuesday, November 16 @ Dixon Place
161A Chrystie St.
New York, NY 10002
7:30 pm $6
Visit Belladonna's web site here to buy tickets in advance.

Scalapino's play is directed by Fiona Templeton, with Katie Brown, Stephanie Silver and Julie Troost. Dance choreographed and performed by Molissa Fenley. Music by Joan Jeanrenaud. Costumes by Jill St Coeur. Projected drawings b Eve Biddle. Video selected by Stephanie Silver and edited by John Jesurun.

About Leslie and her work, Lyn Hejinian recently wrote:

Leslie's work was a manifestation of what she termed "continual conceptual rebellion." "Continual conceptual rebellion" is a means of outrunning the forces that would re-form (conventionalize) one. If you stay in one place too long you'll be taken over—either by your own fixating ideas or by those of others. To survive one must always be outrunning what she called "the destruction of the world." This is a reason that travel is such an important motif in Scalapino's work.



It may also be what drew her so frequently to collaborations, especially with artists working in other media. These included visual artists Kiki Smith, Petah Coyne, and Marina Adams; musicians Larry Ochs and, most recently, cellist Joan Jeanrenaud; dancers Brenda Way, of the San Francisco-based Oberlin Dance Collective, and June Wattanabe; and with other writers, including Norman Fischer and myself.


Read more of what Lyn has to say here.

The Electronic Poetry Center's page on Scalapino is here.
The Scalapino obituary page is here.

Poets Theater at Small Press Traffic

Small Press Traffic started its New Season with a smorgasbord of Poets Theater Friday Night, January 15, 2010

Here's what the program says about each:

ACT ONE

The Impertinents
by Rodney Koeneke
directed by Lauren Shufran
cast: David Brazile, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Zack Tuck, Lindsey Boldt.

Restoration comedy goes modern American, wherein rakes turn playa and double entendre gets more barefaced-and rolls up as SMS on your celly.

Turn on the Heat, by A.A. Fair
by Dodie Bellamy
directed by Keven Killian
cast (in order of appearance)

Marian Dunton........Lindsey Boldt
Evaline Harris.......Karla Milosevich
"Amelia Rose Sellar".....Anne McGuire
Vivain Carter....Mari Collings
Dream Women......All of the above plus Michelle Rollman
Mrs. Eldgridge....Tanya Hollis
Strip-tease Dancer....Stephen Boyer
Dora.....Norma Cole
Carmen.....Margaret Tedesco
Frieda Tarbing.....Jocelyn Saidenberg
Flo Danzer....Anne McGuire

A.A. Fair's Turn on the Heat, written in 1940, is a hard boiled private eye novel narrated by little tough guy Donald Lam; in this dramatic version Donald, the narrator, is kept offstage and the women he meets address the plot and the audience entirely in the second person.

You're Not My Father (Part One)
by Paul Slocum
part two to be performed & recorded on Januarty 24th in the CCA Writing Center

*****I N T E R M I S S I O N*****

ACT TWO

Praise to the Swiss Federation
by Gabriel Gudding
directed & performed by Michael Cross,et al.

The Event
written & directed by Brent Cunningham
cast: selected from the audience by raffle process

Bidgood Opening--Life on Mars
written & directed by Stephen Boyer
cast: Brittany Murphy, Kevin Killian, Ariel Goldberg, Charity Coleman, West Seegmiller, and Stephen Boyer

Poets Theater 2010 was curated by David Buuck, C.S. Giscombe, and Lauren Shufran.



The evening was all about performativity and bringing the audience into the plays. The atmosphere was carnivalesque with actors launching into the audience, soliciting them for assistance--from reading to acting to the deliberate ringing of cell phones and alarms. David Buuck, standing at the podium on stage, began by introducing the evening's events. It soon became clear that David's remarks were recorded, complete with pauses, sighs and so on, and that he was there on stage mouthing the words, mopping his brow, shifting his weight from one leg to another while the prerecorded intro continued along. Clearly marking the intro as part of the evening's performances, Buuck ate a banana while the speech continued, and then tossed the peel on stage.

In "The Impertinents," Jocelyn Saidenberg's manservant character remarked upon and clambered over the unexpected banana peel. "The Impertinents" proved to be a linguistic treat as the characters--"A," "B," "C," and "D" passed language around like a hot potato. Some of the gems from this piece included, "It is not the journey, it is the restoration," "a dog comes back to its kennel like a tween to texting," "I'm as sexless as a Mormon fellowship," 'How should B be?" "Be impertinent!"

"Turn on the Heat" might be called The Women. As the program notes explain, Bellamy subtracted the male narrator from a hard boiled detective novel and set the glittering cast of women loose, making this their narrative. I've just been rereading Teresa De Lauretis's "Desire in Language and so it was fun to see Bellamy enact her own version of De Lauretis's claim that certain kinds of "myth and narrative rest on a specific assumption about sexual difference"(113). De Lauretis writes, "Medusa and the Sphinx, like the other ancient monsters, have survived inscribed in hero narratives, in someone else's story, not their own; so they are figures or markers of positions--places and topoi--through which the hero and his story move to their destination and to accomplish meaning" (109). So, it was great fun to see this cast of amazingly talented women turn this narrative into multiple narratives, all their own. The heat was indeed turned on and up.

Some lines from "Turn on the Heat": Carmen: "I was a chiseler. You could never trust me. I was too greedy. It was like dope. I wanted to chisel."

"Praise to the Swiss Federation" was directed and performed by Michael Cross and included lots of planned and improvised audience participation. Cross read a piece on time, its keeping and interruptions. Rings and alarms punctuated and diverted Michael's reading as he scrambled to locate the impertinent devices, including his own.

Brent Cunningham sent paper airplanes into the audience and encouraged eager actors to catch one. Thus, a cast was assembled for Cunnigham's own "The Event." The Event began with Cunningham walking on stage and then placing himself face-down on the floor where he peered into a space and exclaimed, "Wow." He was joined by several others, also exclaiming upon the event they "witnessed," encouraging others, "you've got to see this." One person peered into a space on the back wall; the last person on stage put up his sweatshirt hood, gave a pull on its strings, and the hood swallowed his head. He too was wowed. This reminds me of what it is like to watch in-flight movies--one is simultaneously alone and in a public, peopled space--responding to a spectacle, not necessarily the same one (is it ever?) that your neighbor is responding to. All our technological devices--ipods, phones, laptops, etc--make it ever so much more so.

Cunningham also staged "The Immortal Grove," a piece not included on the program and one that staged and explored "failure" or "error." A pair of actors walked hand-and-hand talking, moving finally beyond the auditorium itself, only to be followed by director --Cunningham-- who took the stage and "apologized" for the apparent "mistaken" journey by the actors. Another set of actors appeared on stage, having the same conversation, remaining on stage longer, and then they too drifted out of the auditorium.

Stephen Boyer's "Bidgood Opening" concluded the evening, taking us on a trip to Mars, complete with silvery sheets of paper, toys, and strap on dildos. The finale of this piece was a voluble assault on the audience--"Get Out! Get the Fuck Out!"

A raucous evening, much laughter, and a decided turn toward performativity moving beyond the stage, lines of flight out into the audience.

SPT's Poets Theater Fest 23 Jan 09

What is poets theater? What makes it different from theater generally? These are questions we might ask. We might answer, we know it when we see it. We might say it has a history that one might trace to Gertrude Stein and Frank O'Hara, and to others in Boston, New York and San Francisco though poets theater has been cropping up elsewhere recently, in Chicago and because Carla Harryman is in the Detroit area, one assumes poets theater is happening there as well.

In San Francisco, the last number of years at the beginning of each new year, Poets Theater has been a recurring pagan fête, like some kind of post-holiday tantalizing glitter and glut. What could be better?

First: I am so sorry to have missed last week's plays. For a Reader's Report on them, see Brandon Brown here. After some reputedly nearly nude performances, some have been engaging in a daily ritual of sit-ups. Also, part of the post-holiday glitter and glut....now, I am feeling like a gossip columnist!

But here's what I began to think about on my way home last night with regard to the question of what makes Poets Theater different from theater generally, especially when some plays are full length productions (w/ some kind of narrative "arc" even if asymptotic)and not written in any kind of "verse" or necessarily "poetic" language, though some pieces certainly do contain these elements.

One feature of Poets Theater as I have experienced it in San Francisco is its local, communal nature. The plays are written and directed and acted by writers and artists and other people in the larger alternative creative scene in the city. Those in the audience may have been, at one time or another, on the stage, and usually those who end up on the stage have almost certainly been in the audience at one point or another. Now last night, the first play (see below for program notes from SPT) was written by a Los Angeles writer, Vanessa Place. I don't know anything about Vanessa but I loved her piece. And maybe she's never been in the SPT Poets Theater audience, so perhaps my claim about the local communal nature of Poets Theater doesn't always hold true. And one might say this about Raymond Pettibon's play too: Pettibon lives in LA not San Francisco, but maybe the audience feels like we are acquainted with him because we might know his art and we certainly know about Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy's appreciation of his work. Nevertheless, the people who directed and acted in the pieces are local, part of the community.

Some of the pleasures of Poets Theater include the fact that we might know the actors and enjoy seeing them turn up in various guises and personalities. In one play Jocelyn Saidenberg might be a woman from Iceland, then she's "the King of Turkey" in court dress, and then later Patty Hearst. Sometimes too, the plays poke fun at the community itself, making fun of poets, artists, academics, writers. Some plays inhabit current or recent events (see The News from Zimbabwe below [and, oh, how I wanted to call out STOP! during this production which included Abu-Ghraib style torture]) and popular culture (say in almost anything that Kevin Killian does), or they might reference some of the history and drama of the Bay Area's "poetry wars," or the various incestuous and overlapping relations between members of the community itself. The plays are magnets for local history and relation. They are sticky. Vaudevillian.

Let me swerve asymptotically here for a moment:

I've been rereading Nightwood and recently gave a lecture on it (and The Postman Always Rings Twice) at UCSC. Nightwood is replete with theater and circus.

In a fabulous article: "Circuses and Spectacles: Public Culture in Nightwood" in the Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Summer, 1997), Laura Winkiel writes the following:

Barnes contrasts the mysterious and perplexing public life of the circus performers to the alienating effects of spectacle as they are figured by Robin Vote, a contrast that critiques the transformation of public culture from local, heterogenous sites of entertainment to the capitalized, homogenized culture industry.4 On the level of plot, Robin's solitary wanderings are an aspect of her self-destructive alcoholic behavior, yet the language used to convey her character and her explicit rejection of the circus (she flees the circus and later abandons her circus-decorated apartment) link her to Barnes's earlier critiques of mass culture spectacle. Barnes interrogated aspects of mass culture as early in her career as 1915, when she interviewed Arthur Voegtlin, the artistic director of the Hippodrome, an enormous theatre that subsumed the circus into its spectacular displays. This historical transformation from circus to spectacle rematerializes in Nightwood as its hybrid (what Barnes terms "Elizabethan") aesthetic provides the theatre for the combination of spectacle and circus. This aesthetic compensates for mass culture's alienating effects even while, at the narrative level, it expresses the loss and isolation endured by the main characters (8).

Here's the connection: Poets Theater is akin to the kinds of local, bawdy, participatory theater, circuses and vaudeville productions that existed prior to the advent of spectacular displays, "the capitalized, homogenized culture industry." Guy DuBord's writing on the spectacle is important here. (Brandon mentions spectacle in his piece too. Check it out.)

But, what does this mean for the future viability of Poets Theater beyond its local and contextualized moment and place? I think it has a future. Don't you?


Hannah Arendt on polis:

The polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies b/w people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be.


SPT Program Notes for Poets Theater Fest 23 january 09

A Mummer's Play by Vanessa Place
directed by the lovely Yedda Morrison
set design: young and up and coming Una Lomax-Emrick & Steve Emrick
Swords: Jonas Brash
Score: Frank Brash

Mummers Plays (alson known as mumming) are folk plays performed by troupes known as mummers (or guisers, or pace-eggers, guysers, tipteerer, etc.. They are performed in the street or as houst-to-house visits. They date back to medieval England, with variants in German & French carnival customs.

Father Xmas Dana Teen Lomax
Twing Twang Una Lomax-Emrick
The Doctor Samantha Giles
Jack Finney, The Doctor's Man Norma Cole
Bellzy Bub Tanya Hollis
St. George Wendy Kramer
The King of Turkey Jocelyn Saidenberg

The News from Zimbabwe: A Re-Enactment
conducted by David Buuck & cast

Setting: Midnight in the Harare Central Police Station.
Souce Texts: Dambudzo Marechera, Robert Mugabe, Chenjerai Hove, Cont Mhlanga, Anthony Tongani & Silvanos Mudzvova, & the Los Angeles Times.

Cast: Lara Durback, Dennis Somera, Mary Diaz, Tom Orange, Dillon Westbrook, Erika Staiti, Lindsey Boldt, Rebecca VanDeVoort & David Buuck.

I N T E R M I S S I O N

Flow--Winged Crocodile/The Trains (Act One)written & directed by Leslie Scalapino

Inside a bedroom, three young women demonstrate simultaneous conflict and serene balance between the left and right side of a person's brain.

Left Side of the Brain Leslie Scalapino
Right Side of the Brain Anna Weisman
Tanya (Patty Hearst) Jocelyn Saidenberg
Crocodile-Michelin-Rhino M. Mara-Ann

Only the Money is Realby Raymond Pettibon
from a treatment by Regis Ginn
directed by Kevin Killian

In this thriller an offbeat art historian is hired by a laconic attorney to authenticate a collection of priceless Old Master and Impressionist paintings on behalf of his client, socialite Marilee Larimer. Intrigue, deception, violence ensue. For reasons of time we will only be showing the first few scenes of this full-length play.

Hardin Jordan Kantor
Clitterbuck Kota Ezawa
Marilee Larimer, 40ish woman Dodie Bellamy
Monica Stafford, astronomy prof. Suzanne Stein







Leslie Scalapino in Flow-Winged Crocodile/The Trains (Act One)







Dodie Bellamy and Jordan Kantor in Only The Money is Real





Jocelyn Saidenberg as Tanya (Patty Hearst) in Flow-Winged Crocodile/The Trains (Act One)







David Buuck and Dennis Somera in The News From Zimbabwe: A Re-Enactment









Wendy, Jocelyn and Tanya (and the back of Alli Warren's head!)




Norma Cole and Jocelyn (on the floor) in A Mummer's Play