if . . .

". . . Ernest Abuba's "Kwatz! The Tibetan Project: The Sound of a Hammer Hitting the Head," Leave skepticism and logic outside and just float with the play. Its mystical visions, music, song, dance and occasionally shocking violence may send you away after its 75 minutes with a powerful emotional connection to Tibet under Chinese oppression and with some glimpses into Buddhist apprehension of reality that are beyond words." (THEATER REVIEW | 'KWATZ! THE TIBETAN PROJECT' | A Coma Becomes the Real World, With a History of Modern Tibet By D. J. R. BRUCKNER) :: note :: . . . wish live theater could move more from place to place . . .

Artist Statement : Thoughts, Reflections, Intentions: Absence vs. Presence : Ae Ran Jeong March 2004 Sometimes absence tells time and defines space clearer than presence. Absence evokes memory. Memory takes place in a very specific time and space. The contents are missing but traces are left in the sand. The objects move (escape) into the ocean, yes in the sea salt ocean. The memory is poured out swiftly as if sinking into the sea salt. Yet it is the water that is missing. Just as objects erode, the memory fades. As the objects are pushed onto land again, a weathering transforms them. They return into the earth, the memory becomes who she is. The cycle of life/memory. An adventure with risks, and hopes to grow and deepen who she is. SHE . . .

"I have refused to set down on paper a single phrase that did not emerge from my deepest soul. Not one line that did not express the truth about woman, and about her power of giving. This is why I have asked my pen to take the oath of refusing to write a single line if it were to express weakness or frustration, as well as to refuse to obey me if it felt me cowardly before truth. I then asked it to help me bring to the fore the greatest number of women whose lives I share, by drawing nearer to them and becoming their mouthpiece. " "We would thus bare ourselves completely before each other, by ridding ourselves of the rust accumulated with the passage of time. We would cry out against all the circumstances and events that have deprived us of the bursting forth of our human powers." "Lastly, I believe that theatre is the light that illuminates the path of mankind. A light that ensures an organic link with the spectator by creating warmth between us -- ...

The Saskatoon Native Theater Company present Indian Time By Drew Hayden Taylor in collaboration with the 2004 Circle of Voices Program participants. :: note :: . . . a stunning collaboration . . . powerful, poignant and moves us to a deeper understanding of the mystery of that "Indian thing", of kawansihkik, of lost spirits and time seers in the time equation . . . as in all great storytelling the narrative is deceptively simply . . . rich in humour, true to life experience, honours the spirit . . . like all great oral storytelling it teaches . . . no pedantics, no didactical preaching - just listen . . . like great drama there are breath-taking theatrical moments where stage, sound & lighting fuse to expand the dimensions of the action . . . Artistic Director Kennetch Charlette creates a sacred here&now place . . . a fantastical & imaginary landscape where his company of youthful artists weave their stories into our hearts as they themselves work...

"In Hungary, I've been told, they often say that when a night in the theatre was good, an angel went through the stage, one time, two times, many times. And for me this moment is the most important thing about the theatre, and a thing which no other art form has, this moment when an angel goes throught the stage." "What happens in those moments?" "Of course I don't know, no one does, because it just happens, or it just does not happen; one night it happens at that part of the play, the next night in another part. " "For me these intense and clear moments, although they are hardly explainable, are moments of understanding, moments when the people who are present, the actors, the audience, together experience something which makes them understand something they never before have understood, at least not as they now understand it." (Looking forward, looking back: theatre and the spiritual, messages to a new world | When an angel goe...

TexT WorK: Working Version March 2004 Ae Ran / Ash Wednesday - T.S. Eliot Alison / My Countrymen - Kahlil Gibran Greg / The Age Demanded - Ezra Loomis Pound Ae: (moan to clarity) "Where is the enemy? We must kill Him first!" (3X) A: (vibration to voice) What do you seek, My Countrymen? Do you desire that I build for You . . . ( more )

TexT Work:The Practice Working Version March 2004 (click picture to the right for video) Ae Ran / Ash Wednesday - T.S. Eliot Alison / My Countrymen - Kahlil Gibran Greg / The Age Demanded - Ezra Loomis Pound Raymon / coordinator Play Act I Ae: (moan to clarity) "Where is the enemy? We must kill Him first!" (3X) A: (vibration to voice) What do you seek, My Countrymen? Do you desire that I build for You Gorgeous palaces, decorated With words of empty meaning, or Temples roofed with dreams? Or Do you command me to destroy what The liars and tyrants have built? Shall I uproot with my fingers What the hypocrites and the wicked Have implanted? Speak your insane Wish! Ae: "In the depths Of this valley our fathers lived, And in its shadows they died, and in Its caves they were buried. How can We depart this place for one which They failed to honor?" A: I have called you in the silence Of the night to point out the Glory of the moon and the dignity Of the stars, but you ...

Trojan Women Strips of cloth that bind us around woulds and mounds of flesh of the dead and living like mummies in a womb faceless voices to the sea bits of earth in our nails as we wrap our grief mothers sisters daughters leaving ruins of the city rituals saving our souls. Hecuba Andromache Ashes to ashes soil in tongue taste of Troy mourning the dead digging the graves of men while daughters and sisters wrestle with the demons found in obedience and duty and place lost in the landscape of his story visions of water washing over rock             Water wrapping, lapping            your lips cold as rock hard hands clap you back to the living chasms of holy fire around you shrouded limbs too numb to feel the space between child and grace Leaving ask for me tomorrow invisible behind a mask digging for ...

. . . he thought of himself as suffering from the opposite of loneliness—which, he was amazed to discover, didn't have a name. Why, of the 600,000 words in the language, was there no word for the opposite of loneliness?" - Jon Hassler, The Love Hunter (About Last Night | TT: Almanac ) :: note :: . . . this quote was found in an AJBlog . . . TT has been a delightful read these past months . . . don't think I'd like to read The Love Hunter yet the quote resonates . . . [de]part[ing] WayfulWeary. . .

""When you look at yourself as a director, you think you are too clever in certain aspects," Mr. Von Trier said. "The rules that you make for yourself should work against that. If I felt I was being a bit too clever and aesthetic about the colors, for example, then the rule would be, `You are not supposed to touch the color button.' So for my part, that's why my rules are changing all the time. I'm looking at myself from my mentor's point of view."" (NYTimes | Movies | Dogme: Still Strong, but Less Dogmatic By DAVE KEHR) :: note :: . . . philosophy of change . . . re-imagining the act[ion] . . . setting yourself obstacles . . . looking at yourself from your mentor's point of view . . . while working it seems so important to trick oneself and not fall into the easy, learned tricks of the trade . . . entering the limits of what is possible without a violation of the nature of what you are doing . . . to allow the change or rathe...

"Rather than embarking on a lengthy systematic process of complex theory building, they tend to speak in basic truths --pithy statements that contradict conventional theory yet are found true in practice, they think in aphorisms, and they explore with heuristics." (Networking, Knowledge & the Digital Age | Words to Live By ) :: note :: . . . often felt shame when speaking in aphorisms or adages . . . perspective has changed . . . it has always been an attempt to be simple . . . when confronted with the complex . . .  . . . there must be a simpler way . . .

(via Rhizome.org )

"And the answer, the necessary starting point, is that journalism comes in many forms and many varieties. It isn't a "thing". It is a loose and living concept, a trawl for facts or for slivers of truth conducted within enduring traditions and with some imposed disciplines (including the right to answer back). How does the theatre cope with all that?" (Guardian Unlimited | Arts | Features | Extra! Extra! | The new journalism isn't in newspapers - it's on stage. But can this version of the truth be trusted? Peter Preston investigates ) :: note :: . . . not so much whether journalism is theater . . . but a stimulating discussion about facts & art . . . do they work together . . .

"In 1964, Prof. Katz became director of the LINAC laboratory and ushered in what Prof. Bergstrom argues was a golden age of nuclear-physics research at the university with students and visitors coming from all over the world." (Globeandmail.com | Saskatchewan's atomic champion By STEPHEN STRAUSS ) :: note :: . . . it was Dr. Katz who brought my father to Saskatoon to conduct research on the LINAC . . . I remember these exact words . . . "What he didn't do, he would later tell people, is accept an offer to work on the development of the atomic bomb -- a weapon he considered should never have been dropped on Japan." . . . the values which surround one growing up, whether expressed or simply lived, nuture the path one follows . . . I distinctly remember Dr. Katz as a paradoxical kind, gentle and fierce man who admired my father and coaxed him into being his successor as Head of the Physics Department . . . I saw him through my fathers eyes as his ...

Dogbarked by James O Shea is an original, new Canadian script produced only for its second time by Persephone Theatre following its original production by Dancing Sky Theatre in Meacham Saskatchewan in the Spring of 2002. A perfectly suited play for a Saskatoon audience which explores with humour and wit the rural prairie experience and its perceptions of urban exploitation. Playwright James O Shea captures the unique voice and essence of rustic Saskatchewan and even, at moments, transcends the specific to embrace the universal tensions between urban and country life. A well crafted script shaped with precise appreciation and understanding by director Del Surjik. Dogbarked received the high standard of production values from Persephone Theatre that one has come to expect from this professional company. A well balanced and thoughtful stage, lighting and costume design formulated to serve the action of the play and create a vivid, rich environment for the actors. The entire eve...

"2. The National Theatre is not a school, a museum or amusement hall" "Theatre can handle politics - Brecht showed us that. But politicians never know what to do with theatre. The Right want it to be unsubsidised entertainment while the Left would prefer it to be a branch of the education and social work department. Nationalists tend to want theatre to preserve old languages, old plays or old writers simply for the sake of cultural heritage. A living theatre uses the work of the past to speak to the people of the present. It presents work which offers intimations of the future. It encourages restlessness and it offers possibilities. Let the National be a living theatre. Anything else is the equivalent of performing native dances at buffet dinners in expensive hotels." (sundayherald | Our New National Theatre ... Like An Elephant Let Loose Upon The Machair | We asked playwright David Greig to script a manifesto for Scottish drama. This is his vision for the futur...

her own shards of imagination lacerate the clear, cold shrine each fragment an excavation of perception refusing reduction echoing translucent glories occupation & resistence build opulent entrancements energetically revising impulses of lyric intensity a choreographic, illuminated tessera flaming our uncensored random miracles of shared intelligence and heart.

"A lot of media have suddenly taken notice of an artist who has been well-known in Canada since the 1970s. They have taken notice because he was recently awarded the Governor-General's Award for visual art. Now that they have taken notice, they have decided they don't like him, that he is a charlatan and an outrage and a waste of taxpayers' money. " (Globe&Mail | Entertainment | Russell Smith By RUSSELL SMITH ) :: note :: . . . at the same time as wood s lot . . . with his William Ropp's site link , sent me to this feed which led to a reminisce about Otto Muehl , Nitsch and the whole Vienna Aktionismus . . . I encounter the almost trivial and petty discourse of art today . . . at least the prattle of newspaper journalism . . . three years ago newspapers were my daily read . . . today it is the blogosphere . . . what a wonderful difference . . .

pAin clusters of forgiveness we are . . . . . . . . not . . . . hidden. the heart dives no less . . . sliding into thaw . . . . a strata of memory. without tunneling through . . . . history . . . . the significant trait exposes malignancy. . . . . surgical removal . . . .

"Tim Nowlin has written of Spalding's Canadian landscapes shown in the 1996 exhibition Imagining Eden: 'Hovering between representation and abstraction, the paintings support multiple, contradictory readings, and there lingers, ever present, the possibility of the abyss.' " (Concealing/Revealing | Voices from the Canadian Foothills ) :: note :: . . . a stirring & insightful memorium interview concerning Toni Onley has played inside me for over a week now . . . it is this power to live in the memory of others i need to capture . . . point to Jeffrey Spalding . . . there resides the spirit and the spiritual that Onley carried . . .

Instant message from Paris - July 24, 2003 i had some thoughts in the middle of the night in my sleep, so i got up and wrote them down i thought of the work of grotowki, what did he find at the end of his death? grotowski opened the new branch i can not find the better word now, not a new genre, it could be still the theater genre, but different branch i think that it is the work, it is the character of the work, the reason why they are careful to open it up, not because it is sacred or in process, that is what the work requires, i have been thinking of the korean traditinal singing a lot in korean, we learn the traditional songs by orally, only oral passing is accepted, still now, nobody can change it, it is nation's agreement through the tradition any country that has this oral passing tradition will not surprise by it, but, songs can be passed orally because it is songs, but how about theater? how can we pass? and what to pass? theater is instant art work in the form, there can ...

eyes closed sometimes i close my eyes all night long because i like the unspoken tangled with breath for what is visible carries us inside to a place so deep across what can't be crossed on the verge broken open opening into orchards of empty space

the more we surrender sounds come close to us as deer bees drown in blossom heavy oleander as a spring crosses the courtyard and it is suddenly clear the land drawn on maps is real. Entire fields of sunflowers between Istanbul and the coast. White steps down to water. Bees there on a pitcher, and yes, it is wet. (from Tenderness Shore. Meredith Stricker) :: note :: . . . working text : spent the better part of two days re-installing radio : broken now mostly fixed and managable (i think&hope) : huge patience : till the next time . . .

trojan women fragment blazes ...tatters hanging from wrists graveclothes faces shrouded ... voicing torment ritual longing peace be with you.

"What do facial features means in an age where face transplants are possible and new eye/hair color can be bought at the pharmacy? What does your name mean when you can change it whenever you want? Do you really have a home address? Identity is not defined by a set of factors that specify an individual's physical manifestation but the influences which determine their mindset. A matrix of locations identifies the individual inasmuch as we understand the peculiarities of the locations listed. The relationship between five slots and the qualities of the specific entries do not define the identity of the card holder, but create a field of relative identity. New York today, Graz tomorrow, just want to relax in Oaxaca. Where have you been? Where are you now? Where are you going? Where did you begin? Where do you wish you were? Global identity is derived from a glimpse of our movement through time. Answering the five questions on this card tells one who you...

"The Invisible Actor Training invites what is invisible and silent, the unchanging presence beneath all art. This pedagogy is not only a marriage of practices and poetics, but also a way of being—present, transparent and free." ( Theatre of the Invisible )

""Each type of mushroom has a different melody; it's their way of expressing themselves. At first the music starts gently but then it grows stronger," he explains, smiling broadly." "Swinging his large basket containing a mushroom encyclopedia over one arm and clutching his pen and paper, Halek slowly makes his way through the forest. As he pauses and stands still above the cluster of mushrooms, lost in concentration, he attracts bemused stares from passers-by." "So far, says Halek, a composer by profession, he has documented the melodies of 1,700 different types of wild mushroom across the country." ( digitalsouls.com | Vaclav Halek: Melodies of the Mushrooms posted by Katka Krosnar)

"In the 1990s, the Internet connected us to a planet-wide web of information-all the zillions of bits that are stored in computer memories and hard drives. But now, thanks to an ongoing revolution in highly miniaturized, wirelessly networked sensors, the Internet is reaching out into the physical world, as well." ""We call it 'the Embedding of the Internet'," says Deborah Estrin, director of the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, a multi-university research partnership that was launched in August 2002 with funding by the National Science Foundation (NSF). "And it's going to transform our ability to understand and manage the physical world around us."" (context | the sensor revolution ) :: note :: . . . lots more . . . thinking about emotional sensors . . . physo-physical sensors that extend into understanding acts of imagination . . . pure science fiction to me . . .

"Why is cultural studies - as in space and culture important? In its interdisciplinary, and even wreckless, boundary-crashing "trans-" disciplinarity it represents the future of the humanities and liberal arts. Taking on the politically engaged style of 20th century intellectuals, and learning from the social sciences critical understanding of the social construction of facts (note I didn't say all of reality) produced a new field which does much more that (re-)articulates the traditions of cultures and is responsible to a historical corpus (a kind of conserving approach). Its academic practice is out of the ivory tower and into the town, reflecting on everyday life in the hear and now. That makes the corpus of "great books" relevant and allows historical insights to come alive and mix into the soil of lived places." (Rob | Canadian Association of Cultural Studies | space & culture ) :: note :: . . . a whole new set of places to link&lurk...