Encore une fois, Bread & Puppet

We, Sylvia and poet friend Monique LaForce, of Québec, attended the B&P Circus this last Sunday. It was in the New Theatre instead of in the field, because of weather. They performed to two packed houses, one after the other, but with no Pageant in the woods. It was even better than before. It was great. Monique, who had never seen a Bread and Puppet performance before, said it was like entering another world.

And Peter Schumann was Uncle Sam again on his sky-high stilts. Go to this URL to see him on them: http://breadandpuppet.org/ (or click at the Bread & Puppet link on the right)




Monique LaForce, poet, after picking wild raspberries at Mullein Hill, Glover, Vermont.

more Bread and Puppet pictures from July 4, 2009

Some in rags, some in jags ...

I love these new puppets with (I think) plastic buckets for mouths. I love their bright colors and how, moving down Glover Road in Barton, Vermont, their ribbons of rags lift in the cool July breeze.

and some in velvet gowns.




And who wouldn`t love Dirt Cheap Money, title and theme of this year's circus?

From the north country

One of the joys of being in northern Vermont -- in the Northeast Kingdom, as it's called -- is the opportunity to see the great Bread and Puppet Circus.The sunshine came out just for them, when the band started playing in the Barton parade, and it stayed all afternoon so that people could enjoy the first circus of the season. (Otherwise, not a lot of sunshine that week in the Kingdom.)

Elizabetta, from John Reed's Insurgent Mexico

Back in the Texas heat for a month as of today, and in a small town where local theatre is not very local and not, in the opinions of some, theatre, after giving two book talks on Right Relationship: Building a Moral Economy, I found myself putting into Celtx a (new and improved, that is to say, revised) version of a play I wrote some time back. Well, I wrote it on the last typewriter we purchased, a manual Smith Corona which now lives, with its extra keys for Spanish, at the cabin in upstate Vermont. Think of it? I wrote this play before we ever owned a computer.

But it's computerized now!

So the play is Elizabetta. "Elizabetta" is also the title of Chapter 13 of John Reed's book, Insurgent Mexico. But the play gives more than just that chapter. I worked to present some of the depth of Reed's experience there, from the whole book; and beyond that, it begins and ends in a prison cell in Russia.

As the movie Reds has it, he didn't actually die in prison, but shortly after being released; but drama is fiction, or so I learned as a cataloger. One can take liberty.

If you'd like to see the play, follow the link to my plays on Celtx, on the right. For a little while, Elizabetta will be on the opening Projects page. Afterwards, you will need to put either SilviCol or Elizabetta in the Search Box.

Celtx is no longer free to those of us who use it for writing or production purposes, but it's still free to the browsing public.

I thought this play might be good for radio and looked up that format. The new Celtx, though, makes an instantaneous adaptation to Audio Format or Screenplay. That's good enough for me for now.

Joe's Mrs. Warren's Profession!

"The acting is great," reads one review. Another has this:

"Joseph Franchini’s performance as Praed is also a gem, from the time he nervously approaches to meet Vivie and becomes inexorably drawn into the family’s drama...
That each character wholeheartedly believes in his own standpoint and worldview, whether with a sense of naïveté or entitlement, makes their interactions captivating and provocative to watch throughout the performance...." (Off Off Online)

Below Joe's picture, on the right, is a link to a review; or just search Google with Mrs. Warren's Profession, Joe Franchini.

Congratulations, Joe.

Anouihl's Antigone

Last night I saw a wonderful production of Jean Anouilh's Antigone at Théâtre de Poche (Pocket Theatre) here in Quebec City, at the University Laval. Antigone had lip piercings and unkempt hair, dressed in grunge black. The jacket she left behind on her last entry into her tomb the young Hémon will hold it as if it were the bundled child they might have had. The audience walked through the cast, assembled beforehand on-stage as Anouihl requested for curtain rise -- and here there was no curtain. The tone was set from the moment your ticket was taken by one of the guards.

It's a splendid script, of course, and these young French Canadians actors were in their element with the French.

Sylvia SilviCol news

Sylvia Ann Manning (SilviCol) is happy to note that her play about Walt Whitman's housekeeper was one of two plays chosen for a Herstory event by Co-op Theatre East. The full name of the event is COTE Tales: "In Her Own Words: Retelling Herstory".

The title of the SilviCol play is Elizabeth's Book about Mary.

The staged reading will be Sunday, March 29, 2009, at 6 pm at Kaffe 1668, 275 Greenwich St. in Tribeca, NYC.

A link for Co-op Theatre East is at the right. If you go to the link, go on to the blog.