"The core event of the festival shall be the forum of exchange between independent theatre artists in a form of presentations. The participants are mainly those who have not performed at the Grotowski Centre yet. The purpose of the forum is to gather and communicate not only during the presentations, but through mutual contacts, exchanges and initiatives as well."(THEATRE WITHOUT BORDERS|EASTERN LINE FESTIVAL in POLAND, ODIN TEATRET)

:: note :: . . . just a marker . . . linkrot may occur . . .

"Submitted for your consideration: 'He was prosecuted because of his words. He didn't harm anybody; he didn't commit an assault; he didn't steal; he didn't engage in any conduct, which directly harmed someone else. So, therefore, he was punished, first and foremost, because of the words he used.'"

"That's not Colorado's Governor Bill Owens taking about Ward Churchill. These are the words of a former assistant district attorney who helped prosecute comedian/social commentator Lenny Bruce. The last line of that quote reads: 'We drove him into poverty and used the law to kill him.'"(GNN|We have the right to remain silent[sigma]but the duty to speak)

:: note :: . . . shameful moments have been the times i remained silent . . . silence is complicity . . . the powerful fear words for they believe in the power of words . . . stifle dissent . . . stifle the spirit . . . stifle life . . .

acting is
      anguish
            
abyss

F. R. Scott
Laurentian Shield

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer,
This land stares at the sun in a huge silence
Endlessly repeating something we cannot hear.
Inarticulate, arctic,
Not written on by history, empty as paper,
It leans away from the world with songs in its lakes
Older than love, and lost in the miles.

This waiting is wanting.
It will choose its language
When it has chosen its technic,
A tongue to shape the vowels of its productivity.

A language of flesh and of roses.

Now there are pre-words,
Cabin syllables,
Nouns of settlement
Slowly forming, with steel syntax,
The long sentence of its exploitation.

The first cry was the hunter, hungry for fur,
And the digger for gold, nomad, no-man, a particle;
Then the bold commands of monopolies, big with machines,
Carving their kingdoms out of the public wealth;
And now the drone of the plane, scouting the ice,
Fills all the emptiness with neighbourhood
And links our future over the vanished pole.

But a deeper note is sounding, heard in the mines,
The scattered camps and the mills, a language of life,
And what will be written in the full culture of occupation
Will come, presently, tomorrow,
From millions whose hands can turn this rock into children.

i dream you dream of us

breathing yes silently

tomorrow

"At 51, Antero Alli is a Alli cherubic and intense technician of ecstasis and personal transformations. Operating primarily under the rubric of experimental theater, Alli specializes in personal/interpersonal/group dynamics within a ritualistic context. Influenced by "paratheatrical" ideas introduced to the world by Jerzy Growtowski, Alli's theatrical groupings are "asocial" laboratories - experiments in human and group consciousness."(The Theater of No-Form | Antero Alli In Conversation With R.U. Sirius)

(more . . .)

:: note :: . . . decades ago was a participant in the (ur) paratheatrical research of Jerzy Grotowski . . . had ventured to Wroclaw, Poland in search of the Poor Theater . . . was confused & disappointed by the activities of the Open Research Theater . . . the activities however shaped every fibre of my understandings of the way of the actor & continue to guide the work of today . . . the education of "no-form" . . .

" On a napkin he scribbled: Jesus! I just remembered what Lisa's favourite game was. After a heavy snow we would go into a back yard with a few of our friends. The expanse of snow would be white and unbroken. Bertha was the spinner. You held her hands while she turned on her heels, you circled her until your feet left the ground. Then she let go and you flew over the snow. You remained still in whatever position you landed. When everyone had been flung in this fashion into the fresh snow, the beautiful part of the game began. You stood up carefully, taking great pains not to disturb the impression you made. Now the comparisons. Of course you would have done your best to land in some crazy position, arms and legs sticking out. Then we walked away, leaving a lovely white field of blossom-like shapes with footprint stems."(Leonard Cohen | The Favourite Game)

(more . . .)

"We're drawn to the truth. We're drawn to the truth when we hear it and when we see it. We're hungry for the truth. We're always surprised because the truth manifests itself in so many different ways and in so many different forms. You can hear it for a moment from your friend, you can hear it from your wife, you can hear it from your children. You can hear it for a moment in a song on the radio. It is so precious when you hear it that you are immediately drawn to it. So I tend to be wary of confining this expression of truth to one kind of activity, one kind of artistic activity."(Leonard Cohen: A Portrait in First Person | a transcript of a television program |Moses Znaimer)

:: note :: . . . as much as I'm drawn to truth I'm always left asking whose truth . . . not so much truth as being drawn to the traces in the snow and the footprint stems that lead to & from the blossoms of life . . . follow the paths . . . create the paths . . .

Thor Hansen Crafting a Canadian Style at the Textile Museum of Canada

Pioneer Harvest Fabric Sample, (detail) c. 1956) A.B. Caya, Kitchener Hand-screened on heavy viscose pebble Huronia Museum & Huron Ouendat Village, Midland (1996 0106 0115E) Photo: Maciek Linowski and Zac Marshall

"In a subject that is so riddled with stereotypes and clichés, the exhibition will address whether Hansen's quest to found an arts and crafts movement that reflected a Canadian identity was noble or naïve."(rabble-rousers | what's up)

:: note :: . . . identity . . . an alternative source is simply to re-inhabit the territory via poetry, myth and sense of place . . .

found at mousemusings
a daily read (maybe just a reason to link)
Follow the meme.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

Sentence:

Also present is Keats, "Take into the air my quiet breath," another bad jest: "Now more than ever seems it rich to die."

from The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett - C.J. Ackerley & S.E. Gontarski

:: note :: . . . p. 123 of first book (Hitler A Film From Germany - Hans-Jürgen Syberberg preface by Susan Sontag translated by Joachim Neugroschel) was a full page illustration . . . don't usually follow the meme . . . something about the randomness & seems like a third cycle . . .

Interrogating the ghost flow
witness the ancestors
river run writing
archive invented stories
to mimic evolution
dream
document the apparations
touch shadows
wear movements
see traces
of transformations
feel the play shining connection
visitations
perform

:: note :: . . . first tentative step for a young collaboration . . .

'The worst cruelties of life are its killing injustices. Almost all promises are broken. The poor's acceptance of adversity is neither passive nor resigned. It's an acceptance which peers behind the adversity and discovers there something nameless. Not a promise, for (almost) all promises are broken; rather something like a bracket, a parenthesis in the otherwise remorseless flow of history. And the sum total of these parentheses is eternity.(Open Democracy |That have not been asked: ten dispatches about endurance in face of walls | John Berger "The worst cruelties of life are its killing injustices." John Berger on poverty, desire, storytelling, and the future's gift to the present.)

:: note :: . . . a promise . . . a betrayal . . .

"Fragmentation, the mark of a coherence all the more substantial for being attained through the necessity of undoing itself - not by a dispersed system, nor through fragmentation as a system, but by staging in pieces (a shredding of) what has never existed (ideally or otherwise) as a whole and may not again in some future guise reconstitute itself. The spacing through a timing that can only be grasped - fallaciously - as the absence of time."(Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster (University of Nebraska Press, 1986), Ann Smock, translator. However, the translation used here is mine (Victor Muñoz) and differs slightly from Smock's. | The Journal as Art: "Impossible Text" | Victor Muñoz )

(via wood s lot)

:: note :: . . . first read wood s lot everyday . . . no three times a day . . . 'fragmentation as a system' . . . dreampropulsion . . . intimations of meaning . . . vulnerability & finitude . . . futility & fragility . . .

:: note :: . . . icicles stream off the temple roof . . . today -18 + past days quite mild + previously lots of drifting snow = icicles . . . emotionally the same type of stream . . . cold today + days of hot + lots of buildup = flow . . . the translucent pointed beauty of frozen motion . . .

STA (The Saskatchewan Teachers' Association)
Publicly-Funded Education Taking Stock and Moving Forward

". . . the one - if not the only - public structure we have which is capable of reaching out to all citizens in all parts of the country and making them feel part of the extended family of citizenship is the publicly-funded education system." - John Ralston Saul

Keynote Address
Publicly-Funded Education - The Foundation of Our Collective Society
His Excellency John Ralston Saul

"Over 100 years ago, the founders of our province made education their top priority. They believed that education should be equally accessible to all, regardless of gender, socio-economic class, colour, ethnic background, country of origin or culture. They believed each member of the community should financially support this educational system. They were opposed to the British model of education that used a system of private schools for the rich and inferior public who could not afford to attend a private school. The Chiefs of the First Nations insisted upon the same publicly-funded education for their children as a critical part of the treaties."

"The people of Saskatchewan understood the importance of working together for a common goal through collective action. Publicly-funded schools have served as a gathering place in Saskatchewan for all children and their families who might not otherwise meet each other. Saskatchewan also led the movement for the inclusion of children with special needs and their becoming an integral part of publicly-funded education. Such a system of education created a collective world view that planted the seeds for other collective ideas such as Medicare and co-operatives. Demands for more democratic and open forms of government come from places where publicly-funded education exist for all children. Much of the stife we see in the news comes from environments where children either do not have access to education or only an elite few get to attend a school based on their gender or ability to pay."

"Publicly funded schools are becoming one of the last remaining institutes that serve as a unifying force in the community. It is in these schools that children and the next generation of leaders developed their world view and awareness of the collective community we live in."

:: note :: . . . Saskatoon teachers meet . . . listen and aquire a valuable articulation of history, issues, forces, and critique for publicly-funded education . . . compelling observations on language, culture, class, imagination, citizenship, an open inclusive society, experiences of an egalitarian post modern state, native relationship, and the consultancy industry . . . funding, class size, literacy . . . hoping the transcript will soon be available . . . there was much more . . . they shared . . .

" Look outward to stay alive. " (Weblogs in Higher Education|A week in a row)

"Look around and mostly what one observes is self-promotion, self-justification and self-righteousness." (Groundhog Day|Changing the World)

:: note :: . . . the response to looking outward is key . . . playing with the response is even more essential . . .

"As Strindberg wrote: "Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist; on an insignificant basis of reality the imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free associations, incongruities and improvisations. The characters split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, disperse, assemble. But one consciousness rules over them all, that of the dreamer; for him there are no secrets, no illogicalities, no scruples, no laws.""(Guardian Unlimited |No limits )

:: note :: . . . one of my most delightful experiences was working on Dream Play years ago . . . no consciousness ruled it was a collective unconscious . . . each actor was invited to an anarchy of no . . .

"Ridley is prepared for the fact that some people will be shocked by Mercury Fur, but he is also keen to pose a question: "Why is it that it is fine for the classic plays to discuss - even show - these things, but people are outraged when contemporary playwrights do it? If you go to see King Lear, you see a man having his eyes pulled out; in Medea, a woman slaughters her own children. The recent revival of Iphigenia at the National was acclaimed for its relevance. But when you try to write about the world around us, people get upset. If I'd wrapped Mercury Fur up as a recently rediscovered Greek tragedy it would be seen as an interesting moral debate like Iphigenia, but because it is set on an east-London housing estate it is seen as being too dangerous to talk about. What does that say about the world we live in? What does it say about theatre today?""(Guardian Unlimited | The devil inside )

:: note :: . . . theater is dominated by those involved in entertainment/experience economy . . . only sanctioned experiences underpinning a safe world view are allowed . . . don't threaten . . . despite the euologizing Miller will be but a footnote in the annuals of theater history . . .

"Some giants just step more softly than others. And then, when nobody's looking, they slip quietly away."(Nick Marino | Jazz world loses a true funk artist)

:: note :: . . . listened to jimmy smith just recently only because a couple years back met an incredible keyboard player who through his imagination sent me to the sources . . . what beautiful words . . . what beautiful music . . .

:: note :: . . . year of the Rooster . . .

"It was then that I remembered being a child: the sheer joy of being raw and the games we played to make ourselves raw again and again. I was uncooked, unprepared, imperfect, exposed and vulnerable. In retrospect, I would describe that as always existing in a state of potential. Instead of feeling scared, I felt free. Instead of feeling pain, I felt alive. I loved being rubbed raw. And despite being told that was more than a little twisted, I continue to seek out things that make me feel raw. And now I want to explore what social rawness is - and how it differs from social friction..."(purse lip square jaw | Anne Galloway | Rubbed raw)

:: note :: . . . describes perfectly the art of the beginner . . . a state i invite my students to enter when playing . . . working on scenes it is the space between the players that becomes raw . . . the more deliberate the friction the greater the activation of potential . . . the joy of being raw is the acting source . . . often in the playing the physicalization and/or emotions disturb . . . whenever asked the actors respond "We're fine!" . . . be fine . . . be raw . . .

"9. Clouds: forms-contents, becoming, floating worlds, vastness and evanescence, moving permanence. And, before all - and at the very end - a certain relationship with the sky."(The Decalogue)

:: note :: . . . devising the decalogue . . . snake in the clouds . . .

"Businesses must orchestrate memorable events for their customers, they argue, and that memory itself becomes the product - the "experience". More advanced experience businesses can begin charging for the value of the "transformation" that an experience offers, e.g. as education offerings might do if they were able to participate in the value that is created by the educated individual. This, they argue, is a natural progression in the value added by the business over and above its inputs."(wordiQ.com | Definition of The Experience Economy )

(via WebSeitz/wikilog) :: note :: . . . experience economy day . . .

" Emphasizing the intrusiveness of our electronic age, the outside world is not fenced out of this show, but deliberately allowed to interrupt it. The show will begin with a statement by the stage manager that tells the audience and the actors to leave their cell phones on. The play will actually stop if anybody's cellphone rings."(lamama.org |Yokastas Redux)

:: note :: . . . we've come a long way . . . "Dionysus in 69" to Yokastas Redux . . . full body to full electronic contact . . . myth to myth . . . ashes to ashes . . .

"A member of The Regina Five, Kenneth Lochhead is celebrated nationally for his colour-field stem paintings of the early 1960s. Yet little is known of his beginnings as a student in Philadelphia and Europe, an art school and gallery administrator, landscape and mural painter in Regina during the 1950s, or his subsequent abstract and representational work in Winnipeg, Toronto, and Ottawa."(MacKenzie Art Gallery | Kenneth Lochhead Garden of Light 1948-2002 January 29, 2005 to May 23, 2005 Organized by the MacKenzie Art Gallery Curated by Ted Fraser)

(Fusion)              (Dark Green Centre)      (Heat Rise)

The Regina Five

"Ken Lochhead arrived in Regina in 1950 as a 24-year-old to direct the School of Art at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina College and begin development of the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery. Lochhead also revitalized the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops. He was described as a remarkable and exceptional "modernist phenomenon" by art historian John O'Brian. The new Emma Lake brought the most significant players in the international modern art world to Saskatchewan. The workshops nurtured contemporary art in the province and brought attention and recognition to it, especially to the Regina Five. Lochhead was born in Ottawa and studied in Philadelphia and several European locations. Lochhead was the first to leave the province and went on to accept teaching positions at the Universities of Manitoba, York and finally Ottawa. Lochhead still lives and paints in Ottawa."(University of Regina | Campus News)

"Men without memories will be created; men in a continual violent ecstasy, forever starting at ground zero; a "critical ignorance" will come into being with extensive roots in the long prehistory of savage man, the magus of the caves." (Guiseppe Pinot-Gallizio|Manifesto of Industrial Painting: For a unitary applied art)

:: note :: . . . something very attractive about the situationists . . . a lover of the outrageous aphorism & manifesto . . .

"A study of a Minneapolis program showed that arts integration has substantial effects for all students, but appears to have its greatest impact on disadvantaged learners. Gains go well beyond the basics and test scores. Students become better thinkers, develop higher-order skills, and deepen their inclination to learn."(washingtonpost.com | The Art of Education Success)

:: note :: . . . who is listening . . . no one within earshot . . .

"'We went into this study believing we would find a core model, with a small group of people who are sexually active,' Moody said. 'We were surprised to find a very different kind of network.'"(RESEARCHERS MAP THE SEXUAL NETWORK OF AN ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL)

:: note :: . . . this map haunts . . . what type of map exists at the school where i teach of over one thousand high school students . . .