. . . students presented a workshop at the peace conference . . . created a performance working with the themes of peace, oppression and rights . . .

"The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus by Atwood is a retelling of Homer's story from Penelope's point of view. Atwood told Reuters she almost pulled out of the project after she failed in several attempts to write about different myths."

"Homer portrays Penelope as the faithful wife who holds the country together and raises a son while Odysseus is off fighting his wars. When Odysseus returns, he kills Penelope's suitors and her maids."

"Atwood said she was haunted by the tale of the 12 hanged maids and her book reveals what Penelope was really up to. "The story as told in The Odyssey doesn't hold water," she said. "There are too many inconsistencies.""

...

"'I grew up thinking that history is the stuff that makes newspaper headlines and gets analyzed by journalists, while myth was something that primitive people swapped around the campfire. The distinction seemed quite simple," said author Michael Faber in an interview with Reuters."

"'Recently I realized that the distinction is nonsense," he said. "We are living in a post-Enlightenment era of mythology, a volcanic eruption of new legends. Savage, virile metaphors to rival anything from the Bible or the Bhagavad-Gita hold sway in our awed and anxious world.' "(cbc.ca |World's top writers recruited to rewrite ancient tales)

Byung-Hun Min . . . artistic statement . . . Nature in Korea is rather small, delicate and sensitive to me. I come closer to it much more easily. And I try to see it with a serene state of view.

:: note :: . . . found at wood s lot what has become the most important site on the web . . . a place to return to again and again . . . changes with the consciousness of the days and the cycle of the seasons . . . many recognized as another year passed a short while ago . . . decided to wait . . . glad i did . . . the above statement speaks to how to approach such places on the web . . .

. . . Scorched Ice by Mansel Robinson receives a studied perfomance by Last Exit Theater . . . . . . the words are carefully crafted . . . the back & forth scenic structure drives the action past the target of the harrowing threat of nuclear holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis to a coming of age story . . . the voice of the play is strong and sure . . . rich & resonant in metaphor the sparse action is deliberate & evocative . . . the characters constantly tremble trapped or fleeing a harsh, inexplicable existence . . . the naive childish backdrop used to project the plodding of the nameless and phantasmagorical refugees or the universal night sky gives a luminous depth to the narrative . . . Yet . . . during my early training a wise man of the theater instructed: "cut the spoken which doesn't advance the action . . . let the actions speak" . . . a playwright needs to trust action . . . a director courage to keep the words on the page to release the action . . . the actor to play between the words to circulate action . . . the volatile nature of Scorched Ice demands not a well tempered serious reading but a free wheeling ride . . . Robert Benz, as the grandfather, held a flame to his hand challenging us to smell burnt flesh . . . lighter fluid filled the air . . . for a brief moment I flinched . . . took a sharp intake of breath . . . the lungs scorched . . . Skye Brandon and Last Exit Theater as part of the Live Five season continues to search for "new audiences" and broaden the theater landscape . . . a worthy aim . . . simply dare to risk more . . .

"The Image That Speaks Volumes * Evokes * Provokes * Kindles * Awakens * Suggests * Stirs * Invokes * Agitates * Educates "(fno.org |Wondering with and about Images by Jamie McKenzie )

:: note :: . . . nephew was in town . . . asked to be driven to "the wall" . . . grafitti artists had met and worked on this wall . . .

"Woyzeck was written in 1837 by German dramatist Georg Büchner, who died shortly afterwards at the age of 23. It has been claimed as the first modern play and as an influence on playwrights from Brecht to Sarah Kane. . . "

". . . At the heart of Büchner's dark and troubling story is an everyman tortured by social injustice and oppression, but most of all by sexual betrayal. He proceeds through a fragmentary series of terrifying, almost hallucinatory encounters that can lead only to heartbreaking tragedy. Woyzeck is a difficult play that addresses the big questions about human existence without offering much hope or comfort. . . "

". . . The arresting stage design features an elaborate arrangement of gleaming industrial pipes overlooking a grassy riverbank, while stretching across the front of the stage is the river itself - a metre-high, water-filled glass tank in which the play's lovers swim and writhe like fish. . . "

"'. . . If you want challenging theatre,' he says, 'and you want to explore the limits of the actors, you can't just do it with the set, or the lighting, or the way it's written. It has to reach all levels, which is what makes it so fascinating to watch.'(arts.telegraph | The action man of the theatre)

:: note :: . . . a stellar play . . . a favourite of mine . . .

"Today is Hangul Day: on this day in 1446, King Sejong the Great promulgated the Korean alphabet, hangul."(Languagehat | HAPPY HANGUL DAY.)

:: note :: . . . celebrating thanksgiving a day early almost missed this . . . do check the source . . .

". . . Pinned on the bed by her small body with the big camera in my face, I felt my claustrophobia kick in; my heart-rate accelerated and I began to wheeze. I understood that as soon as I exhibited any signs of distress, she would have her picture. She would have got behind the public persona of Life cover-girl Germaine Greer, the "sexy feminist that men like". I concentrated on breathing deeply and slowly, and keeping my face blank. If it was humanly possible I would stop my very pupils from dilating. Immobilised between her knees I denied her, for hour after hour. Arbus waited me out. Nothing would happen for minutes on end, until I sighed, or frowned, and then the flash would pop. After an eternity she climbed off me, put the camera back in her bag and buggered off. A few weeks later she took an overdose of barbiturates and slit her wrists. . ."

". . . To say that Arbus's creativity was driven by disgust is not to dismiss her as an artist. It is a curiously moralistic view of art that says it cannot be generated by negative emotion. Good haters can make good art, but their despair and indignation ought to be called forth by something more sinister than mere human imperfection and self-delusion. Arbus is not an artist who makes us see the world anew; she embeds us in our own limitations, our lack of empathy, our kneejerk reactions, our incuriosity and lack of concern. Hers is a world without horizons where there is no escape from self."(Guardian Unlimited |Wrestling with Diane Arbus )

:: note :: . . . so who is the artist & who is the story teller & what's the story when you draw the conclusions . . .

"A modern and ironic look at Commedia dell'Arte. Impressions from a comic and poetic world full of meetings and clashes that reveal themselves through dances and extraordinary loves."(Teatrino Giullare | Serenades)

:: note :: . . . attended a splendid performance . . . beyond words . . . beyond thoughts . . . "Beyond the barriers" pushed deep into the heart and gut to stir laughter and awe . . . from clowns of the absurd through poetic gestural language back to the tradition of commedia dell' arte the scenes danced, sometimes wildly and other times gently, around the place where theater eludes precise meaning and moves beyond to the mystery of the rhythm and irony of life . . .

. . . a brilliant bricolage where each group performed intimations of meaning about vulnerability & finitude and futility & fragility . . . archaically physical all the works were propelled by actors exploring an explosive dynamic . . . and there resides the power of "Beyond the barriers" . . . theater as search and serendipity . . . no piece was based on finding the right answer . . . what it seemed based on was linking to the next question . . . to curiosity . . . to tinkering with bits of stuff and the funny tools of theater like clown noses and puppets . . . to put that stuff together into entirely new and heretofore unimagined kinds of 'lazzi' . . . a dazzling afternoon conceived by Wide Open Theater . . . thanks . . .

"The first difficulty that we face in order to understand correctly the workings of tragedy according to Aristotle stems from the very definition which that philosopher gives of art. What is art, any art? For him , it is an imitation of nature. For us, the word "imitate" means to make a more or less perfect copy of an original model. Art would, then, be a copy of nature. And "nature" mens the whole of created things. Art would, therefore, be a copy of created things."

"But this has nothing to do with Aristotle. For him, to imitate (mimesis) has nothing to do with copying an exterior model. "Mimesis" means rather a "re-creation." And nature is not the whole of created things but rather the creative principle itself. Thus when Aristotle says that art imitates nature, we must understand that this statement, which can be found in any modern version of the Poetics, is due to a bad translation, which in tern stems from an isolated interpretation of the text. "Art imitates nature" actually means:"Art recreates the creative principle of created things.""(Augusto Boal. Theater of the Oppressed. 1)

:: note :: . . . translation the bane of all research . . .