Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Quotes: Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin
A perennial suffering has just as much right to find expression as a victim of torture has to scream. For this reason it may have been wrong to write that after Auschwitz poetry could no longer be written. ...
The concept of a resurrection of culture after Auschwitz is illusory and senseless, and for that reason every work of art that does come into being is forced to play a bitter price. But because the world has outlived its own demise it needs art as its unconscious chronicle.
Theodor Adorno
Only for the sake of those without hope, has hope been given to us.
Walter Benjamin
Posted at 8.27 am in /Quotes
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Monday, 12 May 2008
While I busied myself with a new play or two this weekend (even as I sought an actress and/or director for this little piece of work, but as Neil Young memorably said, "Rust never sleeps"), artsjournal.com reposted my comments on creativity and consultants for the Guardian at their NPAC blog. Additional notes from Jason Grote and Scott Walters are appended to the original Guardian post. From Denver to New York to London and back again. I get jet lag just thinking about it.
And, making up for lost time, artsjournal.com recently introduced a third blog about theatre to add to the other two they already host. Philadelphia Inquirer critic Wendy Rosenfield is writing Drama Queen, which "covers theater, dramatic, political or otherwise."
Posted at 8.39 am in /Miscellaneous
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Friday, 09 May 2008
Shalimar Wishes You
a Happy
Mother's Day
(See entry for 14 May)
A highly selective, prejudiced look at a few upcoming productions, along with other items of interest:
Saturday, 10 May: The unofficial 2007-2008 Edward Albee theatre season in New York concludes this week with the opening of Occupant, Albee's recent play about sculptor Louise Nevelson. The Signature Theatre Company production stars Mercedes Ruehl and Larry Bryggman under the direction of Pam MacKinnon; Occupant runs through 6 July. More information at the Signature Theatre Company's Web page for the show.
Monday, 12 May: Polish director Grzegorz Jarzyna of Poland's TR
Warszawa theatre company will talk to Susan Feldman, artistic director
of St. Ann's Playhouse, about his upcoming Brooklyn production of
Macbeth tonight at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 365 Fifth
Avenue. TR Warszawa is one of Poland's leading contemporary theatre
companies, revisioning theatrical traditions for the contemporary stage;
Jarzyna's production of Medea at Vienna's Burgtheater won the 2007
Nestroy-Preis. The evening is co-presented by the Polish Cultural
Institute, which is almost single-
Wednesday, 14 May: Performance group The Shalimar returns their show, the
whimsically-
Thursday, 15 May: The Ontological-
Posted at 8.44 am in /Openings
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Thursday, 08 May 2008
Normally I don't participate in these blog memes that go around, but
when new-
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.
This morning the book nearest to me is Anne Carson's meditation on poetry and eroticism, Eros the Bittersweet, and page 123 opens her discussion of Plato's Phaedrus, which I read myself a few years ago. The corresponding excerpt:
Desire stirs Phaedrus when he gazes at the words of this text (epethumei, 228b) and visible joy animates him as he reads it aloud to Sokrates (234d). Phaedrus treats the text as if it were his paidika or beloved boy, Sokrates observes (236b) and uses it as a tool of seduction, to draw Sokrates beyond the city limits for an orgy of reading in the open countryside (230d-e; cf. 234d). The reading elicits from Sokrates an admission that he himself is a "lover of logos" (andri philologo, 236e; cf. ton logon erastou, 228c). Eros and logos are fitted together in the Phaedrus as closely as two halves of a knucklebone.
That's four sentences, but there are no blog police I know of to come knocking at my door. In any case, I offer the challenge to any five visiting bloggers who care to take a crack at it.
Meanwhile, at better bookstores and magazine stands everywhere, you can
find the May 2008 issue of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, in which
appears my brief review of Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre. In a week or so you
should also be able to find the May 2008 Theater
journal from the Yale School of Drama/
This meme's for you, bloggers. Have at it.
Posted at 8.25 am in /Miscellaneous
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Wednesday, 07 May 2008
Wrestling School Summer Session
Much as I don't regret giving graduate school a miss, here's a semester I wouldn't much mind attending. Howard Barker's Wrestling School will be conducting a Wrestling with Barker Residential School on 3-6 September 2008 on the campus of Exeter University in England. Details from the Wrestling School itself:
A four day residential Summer School led by Wrestling School practitioners exploring the practice of preparing and presenting Howard Barker texts in performance.
Howard Barker and The Wrestling School now produce perhaps some of the most controversial theatre in the UK. These exhilarating but challenging works inspire hatred in some but passionate devotion in countless others.
Why?
What are the characteristics of this work?
What are its guiding principles and governing aesthetics?
Why does it inspire so much pleasure and devotion among performers?
How is this work made to resonate so powerfully in performance?
Is the creative process transformed by the writer as director?The School will be of interest to both the practioner (actor/
director) who wants to gain a greater insight into approaches to presenting Howard Barker's texts on stage and those who wish to take a more academic/ analytical approach to the texts and gain greater understanding of Barker's underlying theories of theatre and the highly individual and groundbreaking aesthetic he has developed over the past 10 years. Outline Content
- Masterclass. Howard Barker directing Wrestling School actors in scene work from more recent works.
- Individual and small group work directed by Wrestling School actors using a representative selection of texts from the last 25 years.
- Poetic text and the actor. Examination of the technical demands and rewards of working with Barker texts. To include preparatory voice work.
- Reading the text. A performer's approach to the text on the page.
- Sounding the text. Practical work in sensing that Barker's texts are the gestural in sound; the excitation of the text into the palate and the mind is a somatic experience, which when fully articulated, renders a Barker text clear, exhilarating and real.
- Talk by a writer/researcher on approaches to analysing Howard Barker’s texts and his theories of the Theatre of Catastrophe.
- Theatre of Catastrophe. Barker talks about some of the underlying theories in his approach to his writing.
- The development of an aesthetic philosophy. Howard Barker reflects on the development of the company's style.
- Howard Barker in a Q&A session with leading Wrestling School practitioners.
It will include an opportunity to observe Howard Barker directing company members in the initial exploration of an as yet unpublished and unperformed new text.
Leaders. The Summer School will be led by experienced Wrestling School practitioners, including Melanie Jessop and Gerrard McArthur, with Howard Barker. Leading writers on Barker will also contribute.
More information on attending the residential school, as well as an application, is available at the Wrestling School's Web site.
Posted at 8.47 am in /Miscellaneous
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