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 April/May 2001 Issue |
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| An April Recital: The Languages of Spring | |||
| Note: The End-of-Term Recital Series serves to provide students of InterArts Training—comprised of the Actors’ Training Project, Voice Training Project and Fun(da)mentals Training Project--with an opportunity to test their performance skills under professional conditions in the presence of fellow students and interested friends. The Recitals are formal in the sense that students are presenting the most polished possible version of each piece they do, for the purposes of 1) dignifying their efforts to learn how to do something difficult, and 2) gaining performance experience towards making their future contribution to the performing arts professions. The Recitals are informal, though, in the following senses: they take place in our usual classroom space, mostly making use of what’s there for sets, they are not advertised to the paying public, they are not frequented by agents, videotaping is done strictly a là "home movies" and finally, a certain amount of loopy humor (mirth, levity) is in evidence to help us celebrate a Term Well Done. Since the Recitals take place three times a year, each one concluding three or four months of continuous work for the group students, the occasions are designed to be both educational (look what we can do!) and festive (phew! we did it). You’ll find a copy of the program at the end. Thank you for joining us; this is where you are: |
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| "The Languages of Spring" | |||
| Part 1. Spring: The Alien and the Dead | |||
| Narrator: Welcome to the Actors’ Training Project’s Term I/2001 End-of-Term In-Class Recital of Early-Stage Projects, and Congratulatory Goings-Ons. Our Program tonight is entitled, "The Languages of Spring." Spring has sprung, and naturally our thoughts turn to New Beginnings. Certainly at the Actors’ Training Project we have many New Beginnings to celebrate. Ten days ago we had our 16th Anniversary for the program, we have had "new" newspaper attention, we have a new website coming in May, a contingent of five ATP students is heading for their first professional job abroad, and in their place we have a growing crop of new students working on new projects such as the ones we have to show tonight. Among all of us, too, we can count new studies, new travel, new work, new successes, new gardens and even, of course, new hopes—all coinciding with the springing of Spring. I confess that it seems to me, though, that Spring came very early this year. For this reason, while the birds are newly twittering and the tulips are tulip-ing, many of my thoughts are still…winter-like. I am still finishing with some things, still closing up, covering over some things--doing the kinds of things we associate with the endings of things rather than with beginnings. Sometimes, therefore, when all around me are Perky and Chirpy, my own mind is full of troubling stories, told to me in a language one might hear in other worlds, on other planets: |
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| "Axtherastical" |
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| By Guy de Cointet, "a very important artist who is no longer alive, [who] used actresses to describe identical paintings in completely different terms, suggesting that reality is comprised solely of one's perspective." [From ART HISTORY on the Internet] d. 1999? |
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| Reading #1………………………………………………...…...Kevin J. Morrison Reading #2………………………………………….…………….…Tracy Wilson |
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| Axtherastical, zuz boswjehb ikhdevy e loprovtizugssol willgat. Boswjehb? Ul syurvanqu atropert yg nonomot, pihurrly tc Gisella Xiirach nhulwyderg upimimism. E lo singhulmp ek Xiirachu org Xiirach, ovuhgiws uf sraizer misdod jurotocdaad cilleraty "S. Dakota" bof yna frasel. Niktofped. Atrumonsisus plarredis hinbluugeg yrnamint, e qrezinhare trillartrnuf, gileg Gizelia. Kavoqerner linnezpolo yg melotruwtop, vulnter ikled jredomoling ifelsorg, bilobuqw baweutr fi coeromotal ucsepp acby heefnho. Ur darawxteds ej Gha. | |||
| Narrator: I may be stating the obvious, but let me say that even though it is Spring, everything is not perfect. We have the promise of happy things to come, yes. At the same time, gathered as we are here tonight, we constitute a sobering kind of inverted Noah’s Ark story: two grandfathers to grieve for, two fathers recently lost, two lovers gone, two work lives at risk—along with various illnesses and worries, and even a leaky ceiling. I want these things in my life. I do not want these griefs, these losses, yours and mine--this leaky ceiling—taken from me by some nightmare Hallmark Musical of Dancing Daffodils and Happy Hyacinths. I’d like to keep my ghosts close, to bring my dead along with me into the new Spring. I am grateful for this next poem because it suggests a way for me to do that. Here is not language from another planet, but from some other dimension where people overflow with torrential cascades of lush, urgent language. I read this extraordinary poem as an incantation, a long invitation for the dead to walk with us, to feel included in our Spring. |
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| "Part IV. Thoughts Out of Season" From the poem Vade Mecum in The Face of Creation, by David Wiley, pub. 1996. In memory of my teacher, George House, d. 1985 and my father, d. 2000………….Lissa |
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| IV. Thoughts Out of Season All the songs you meant to sing thrilling as a ride to the stars sad enough to make the bridges cry songs meant to open the doors of Paradise and wash the world in a bath of sweet embraces to make us dance with rainbows on the tops of hills all the songs you meant to sing to make us one together and never forget I will sing for you today All the places you meant to see the tallest mountains and waterfalls the lost cities of ancient peoples who might have been your cousins once the vast deserts and enormous seas the monuments and palaces the perfect temples floating in the rising sun those gleaming towers and canyons painted every color of the earth gardens growing in the tops of trees all these things you meant to see I will see for you today All the paintings you meant to paint the impossible hues the opulent bodies brilliant scenes from a field of enchantment figures that might be everyone counterstrokes and blending so unique that entire histories not yet written might live therein lines within a thought of color mysterious enough to awaken the curiosity of rocks all the beauties the torrential ecstasies you meant to paint the truth you meant to show us so simple and so grand I will paint for you today. All the books you meant to write about the strangeness and the sense of things about people who are different yet the same who sometimes are the playthings of the Fates who swim in human waters where they shine or lie behind a rock consuming all the darkness of the deep who naturally become a part of Earth and Heaven's myth by means of some rare accident or gift or breathe for moments only on the face of a mother and then are gone all the lines you meant to write about the origins of laughter our absurd purpose and the question WHY about how Nature's endless lives are all related and all alone about the textures of being and the various ways of greeting a friend about the infinite possibilities and the choices that we make all the books you meant to write about everything you knew and everything you didn't everything that would come true in the alchemy of ink in the benevolent sorcery of your mind's desire I will write for you today. All the love you meant to give to friends and lovers and children not yet born to people never seen or known to undiscovered species in undiscovered lands to the spirits of the dead and the vague outlines of the forgotten all the love you meant to give to the young souls of animals to everything that knows you in a secret chamber of its heart to those without hope to all the solitary beings yearning to present a part of themselves to the world all the love you meant to give to everything that lives and moves and seeks the light I will give for you today. |
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| Part 2. Shakespeare’s Language in Love | |||
| Narrator: Surely the loveliest language of Spring is the language of Shakespeare’s lovers: | |||
| From Act III scene iii from Shakespeare’s As You Like It [sans Jaques] |
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| Touchstone…………………………………………………………………….……..Kevin Audrey…………………………………………………….…………………………Tracy |
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| [Enter TOUCHSTONE and AUDREY] TOUCHSTONE Come apace, good Audrey: I will fetch up your goats, Audrey. And how, Audrey? am I the man yet? doth my simple feature content you? AUDREY Your features! Lord warrant us! what features! TOUCHSTONE I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths. TOUCHSTONE When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical. AUDREY I do not know what 'poetical' is: is it honest in deed and word? is it a true thing? TOUCHSTONE No, truly; for the truest poetry is the most feigning; and lovers are given to poetry, and what they swear in poetry may be said as lovers they do feign. AUDREY Do you wish then that the gods had made me poetical? TOUCHSTONE I do, truly; for thou swearest to me thou art honest: now, if thou wert a poet, I might have some hope thou didst feign. AUDREY Would you not have me honest? TOUCHSTONE No, truly, unless thou wert hard-favoured; for honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar. AUDREY Well, I am not fair; and therefore I pray the gods make me honest. TOUCHSTONE Truly, and to cast away honesty upon a foul slut were to put good meat into an unclean dish. AUDREY I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul. TOUCHSTONE Well, praised be the gods for thy foulness! sluttishness may come hereafter. But be it as it may be, I will marry thee, and to that end I have been with Sir Oliver Martext, the vicar of the next village, who hath promised to meet me in this place of the forest and to couple us. AUDREY Well, the gods give us joy! TOUCHSTONE Amen. A man may, if he were of a fearful heart, stagger in this attempt; for here we have no temple but the wood, no assembly but horn-beasts. But what though? Courage! … 'Come, sweet Audrey: We must be married, or we must live in bawdry. |
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| Sonnet 29, by William Shakespeare, d. 1616………………………Gayle Brownlee | |||
| When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising, Haply I think on thee,-- and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate,; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. |
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| Part 3. The Spring Thing | |||
| Narrator: When I am at a loss for words, I am glad that so many before me have found such good ones. So, while I am still searching for my own genuine words for Spring, I am inspired by all the ways others have found to talk about it. I am promiscuous in this, first loving one writer more than all the others—and then a few minutes later loving the next one even more! First I love the heightened language of Shakespeare more than any other—and then I come to the intuitive language of e.e. cummings! With Shakespeare’s language, I feel that I have just come home; with cummings’, I feel that I’ve just left on a splendid, long journey. And then there are all the other writers! Yes, Spring is bustin’ out all over, and I do feel oddly happy about daffodils! Let me let the words of these great writers—and the voices of these great students—have the last word tonight on the subject of Spring: | |||
| Three Spring poems from Collected Poems, by e.e. cummings, pub. 1923 |
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| No. 30…………………………………………………………………………...…...Tracy |
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| in Just- spring when the world is mud -luscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it’s spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and it’s spring and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee |
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| No. 75………………………………………………………………………………..Kevin | |||
| Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging a window,into which people look(while people stare arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here)and changing everything carefully spring is like a perhaps Hand in a window (carefully to and fro moving New and Old things,while people stare carefully moving a perhaps fraction of flower here placing an inch of air there)and without breaking anything. |
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| sometimes in)Spring a someone will lie(glued among familiar things newly which are transferred with dusk)wondering why this star does not fall into his mind feeling throughout ignorant disappearing me hurling vastness of love(sometimes in Spring somewhere between what is and what may be unknown most secret i will breathe such crude perfection as divides by timelessness that heartbeat) mightily forgetting all which will forget him(emptying our soul of emptiness)priming at every pore a deathless life with magic until peace outthunders silence. And(night climbs the air |
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| Spring Finale: a spoken collage of great verses and comments about Spring |
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| from Plutarch to Whitman…………………………………Tracy, Gayle, Kevin, Lissa |
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| Richard Hovey, born 1864 Tracy: Spring in the world! And all things are made new! James Thomson, born 1700 Gayle: Come, gentle Spring! ethereal Mildness! Come, George Herbert, born 1593 Kevin: Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie. Reginald Heber, born 1783 Tracy: … When Spring unlocks the flowers to paint the laughing soil. Lord Alfred Tennyson, born 1809 Lissa: In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove; In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. Richard Hovey, born 1864 Gayle: The East and the West in the spring of the world shall blend As a man and a woman that plight Their troth in the warm spring night. Plutarch, born 46 A.D. Kevin: The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in the felicity of lighting on a good education. William Shakespeare, born 1564 Tracy: O, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day! James Beattie, born 1735 Gayle: But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn? Oh when shall it dawn on the night of the grave? James Maurice, born 1844 Kevin: When Spring is old, and dewy winds Blow from the south, with odors sweet, I see my love, in shadowy groves, Speed down dark aisles on shining feet. Edward Gibbon, born 1737 Lissa: On the approach of spring I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure. Robert Browning, born 1812 Tracy: I trust in Nature for the stable laws Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant And Autumn garner to the end of time. John Greenleaf Whittier, born 1807 Lissa: The Night is Mother of the Day, The Winter of the Spring, And ever upon old Decay The greenest mosses cling. Marcus Aurelius, born 121 Gayle: All that happens is as usual and familiar as the rose in spring and the crop in summer. John Logan, born 1748, to the Cuckoo: Kevin: Oh could I fly, I’d fly with thee! We ’d make with joyful wing Our annual visit o’er the globe, Companions of the spring. Alexander Pope, born 1688 Lissa: Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,— Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies: They fall successive, and successive rise. Sir Lewis Morris, born 1833 Tracy: For lo! ’t is Spring! Winter has passed with its sad funeral train, And Love revives again. Percy Shelley, born 1792 Gayle: Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth. Walt Whitman, born 1819, in memory of President Lincoln Kevin: When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed, And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night, I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring Robert Seymour Bridges, born 1844 Gayle: And trustful birds have built their nests amid The shuddering boughs, and only wait to sing Till one soft shower from the south shall bid And hither tempt the pilgrim steps of Spring. William Allingham, born 1824 Lissa: Tantarrara! the joyous Book of Spring Lies open, writ in blossoms. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, born 1836 Tracy: Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born 1772 Tracy, Gayle, Kevin, Lissa And the spring comes slowly up this way. |
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| Curtain Call Awards Ceremony |
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| [scroll down for The Recital Program:] | |||
| "The Languages of Spring" Actors’ Training Project April 24, 2001 at 7:00 p.m. Directed by Lissa Tyler Renaud |
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| Part 1. Spring: The Alien and the Dead | |||
| Opening Remarks, Narrator……………………………………………….....…Lissa T. Renaud |
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"Axtherastical" |
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| By Guy de Cointet, "a very important artist who is no longer alive, [who] used actresses to describe identical paintings in completely different terms, suggesting that reality is comprised solely of one's perspective." [From ART HISTORY on the Internet] d. 1999? |
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| Reading #1………………………………………………...…...Kevin J. Morrison Reading #2………………………………………….…………….…Tracy Wilson |
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| "Part IV. Thoughts Out of Season" | |||
| From the poem Vade Mecum in The Face of Creation, by David Wiley, pub. 1996. In memory of my teacher, George House, d. 1985 and my father, d. 2000………….Lissa |
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| Part 2. Shakespeare’s Language in Love | |||
| From Act III scene iii from Shakespeare’s As You Like It | |||
| Touchstone…………………………………………………………………….……..Kevin Audrey…………………………………………………….…………………………Tracy |
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| Sonnet 29, by William Shakespeare, d. 1616……………………………………Gayle Brownlee | |||
| Part 3. The Spring Thing | |||
| Three Spring poems from Collected Poems, by e.e. cummings, pub. 1923 | |||
| No. 30…………………………………………………………………………...…...Tracy No. 75………………………………………………………………………………..Kevin No. 283………………………………………………………………………..……...Lissa |
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| Finale: a spoken collage of great verses and comments about Spring | |||
| from Plutarch to Whitman……………………………………Tracy, Gayle, Kevin, Lissa | |||
| Awards Ceremony |
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| Inside the program sleeve: | |||
| WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) | |||
| I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD Original Text: William Wordsworth, Poems in Two Volumes (1807). See The Manuscript of William Wordsworth's Poems, in Two Volumes (1807): A Facsimile (London: British Library, 1984). bib MASS (Massey College Library, Toronto). |
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| 1 I wandered lonely as a cloud 2 That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 3 When all at once I saw a crowd, 4 A host, of golden daffodils; 5 Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 6 Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 7 Continuous as the stars that shine 8 And twinkle on the milky way, 9 They stretched in never-ending line 10 Along the margin of a bay: 11 Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 12 Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 13 The waves beside them danced; but they 14 Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: 15 A poet could not but be gay, 16 In such a jocund company: 17 I gazed--and gazed--but little thought 18 What wealth the show to me had brought: 19 For oft, when on my couch I lie 20 In vacant or in pensive mood, 21 They flash upon that inward eye 22 Which is the bliss of solitude; 23 And then my heart with pleasure fills, 24 And dances with the daffodils. |
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| NOTES | |||
| Form: ababcc Composition Date: 1804 1. Wordsworth made use of the description in his sister's diary, as well as of his memory of the daffodils in Gowbarrow Park, by Ullswater. Cf. Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, April 15, 1802: "I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones . . .; some rested their heads upon these stones, as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing." 21-22. Wordsworth said that these were the two best lines in the poem and that they were composed by his wife. |
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Please contact me if you would like to receive the text of my previous column in this new series:
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| © 2001 Lissa Tyler Renaud. All rights reserved. Please share this text—including copyright information—with interested private parties and for educational purposes. Please refer people who would like to be on (or off) the mailing list for this and/or future mailings. But please contact me for permission before you reproduce, translate, transmit, frame or store this in a retrieval system for public use: acttrainproj@earthlink.net. Thank you for your consideration. LTR/ATP | |||