art

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana

2012-01-16T14:02:00.000-08:00

The premise of Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, may strike some readers as laughably unpromising, and others as breathtakingly rich. A sixty-ish Milanese antiquarian bookseller nicknamed Yambo suffers a stroke and loses his memory of everything but the words he has read: poems, scenes from novels, miscellaneous quotations. His wife Paola fills in the bare essentials of his family history, but in order to trigger original memories, Yambo retreats alone to his ancestral home at Solara, a large country house with an improbably intact collection of family papers, books, gramophone records, and photographs. The house is a museum of Yambo's childhood, conventiently empty of people, except of course for one old family servant with a long memory--an apt metaphor for the mind. Yambo submerges himself in these artifacts, rereading almost everything he read as a school boy, blazing a meandering, sometimes misguided, often enchanting trail of words. Flares of recognition do come, like "mysterious flames," but these only signal that Yambo remembers something; they do not return that memory to him. It is like being handed a wrapped package, the contents of which he can only guess.... Next

Brainwave: it could change your mind

2012-01-13T18:26:00.000-08:00

Tickets are now on sale!

About the Karma Chain
As a prelude to the staged program, we are planning to stage a simple game of 'telephone' prior to the session to demonstrate the fallibility of oral transmission and the nature of short-term memory. Each ticket holder will stand on one of the steps of the 108-stepped spiral staircase of the Museum. The guest speaker stands at the base, whispers a short phrase they have prepared to the visitor on the first step, and the phrase would spiral up through the line until it reaches the ear of the scientist. The conversationalists will only reveal the original phrase and the result phrase when on stage in the theater, thus starting the conversation about memory.

About the Mnemonic Art Tour
Take advantage of a short tour of some paintings in the collection that function as mnemonic devices. The iconography in these paintings serve to reference specific passages in the sutras. That is why most of these works were not meant to be revealed to those who were not already initiates. The tour will include two types of paintings: narratives such as the life of the Buddha, and mandalas which are complex two-dimensional diagrams of one's multi-dimensional state of mind......Next

Stroke victim John wins national art acclaim

2011-09-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

Stroke victim John Trower is exhibiting his artwork in Bluebells Florist and Tea Room in Downham Market. Pictured with John is Stroke support volunteer Tracie Gotheridge.

Published on Tuesday 23 August 2011 10:38

AMATEUR dramatics enthusiast John Trower was left without speech and with no use in his right arm following a stroke which thrust him into a world of frustration.
His successful business as a driving instructor came to an immediate end, his driving licence was withdrawn and, unable to speak for the next two years, his outlook seemed bleak.
Determined to pick up the pieces, John began using his left arm, making doodles and drawings before venturing into water colours – and now his efforts have won him a national award and an exhibition.
There was a huge cheer for John as he stepped forward to receive the Susie Hulks Memorial Award at a Stroke Association awards evening at Claridges Hotel, in London.
He said: “I used to be so mobile. I had my own business as a driving instructor and I’d also teach people drama and we’d put on plays.

“You would not believe it to see me now, although there have been improvements.
“My speech, although very stilted, has gradually come back – but it takes so long to get the words the right way round in my head before I can even think about saying them,” said John, who now lives at Southfields, Downham, and is a regular member of the No 13 art group which meets at the Conservative Club....... http://bit.ly/pHrGkz

Community hub helps make growing old an art

2011-09-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

Retired teacher, Libby Creber, dedicated her MA in counselling dissertation to her late mother's desire to make growing old an art. From this has come a unique, social life-line for carers and those they care for at Wymondham's Cup of Caring. Sandie Shirley reports.

Libby knows the heartache and hard-won understanding that comes while caring for two elderly family members. One suffered from senility and a lack of mobility and the other from a loss of coherent language, caused by a stroke. Her empathy and understanding of others was also enlarged during her six case-studies of carers for the http://bit.ly/o0Qjeh elderly during her recent UEA degree. ......

A journey through the brain: Artist uses neuroscience in her work

2011-09-19T08:54:00.000-07:00

SALT LAKE CITY — When artist Amy Caron enters a room, you can't help but have your attention drawn to her. She's been wearing the same wedding dress every day for the past year as an art project.
What began as a steel white, satin, wedding dress has degraded over time, becoming dark and torn.
"I feel like I'm making a textile sculpture where the main ingredient is time," she said, adding it is a project making a statement about commitment and perseverance.

"As an artist, I really like to push boundaries," she said, shifting in her tattered dress.
Caron describes herself as an artist who thrives on taking on new challenges. After coming to Utah to be an aerial ski jumper for the U.S. Freestyle Ski team, she enrolled at the University of Utah to earn a bachelor's degree in dance. She then discovered art.
Eager to join a New York art program that encouraged artists to team up with professionals in other areas, Caron entered an ambitious proposal: doing an art exhibit exploring the human brain. She said the idea came to her while watching a BBC program about neuroscientist Dr. V.S. Ramachandran and his work on mirror neurons.
"I kind of just went crazy and cooked up this grand idea. I thought neuroscience sounded impressive, but I knew nothing about it," Caron said.
It took her a year of research, working with some of the world's top researchers in neuroscience from Harvard, University of California at San Diego and researchers in Italy. It took two more years to create the exhibit and write the roles performers play for each part of the brain......
http://bit.ly/q7q9vt

The short film “Aphasia,” which tells the true story of a North Carolina

2011-04-17T19:20:00.001-07:00

Film screening
The short film “Aphasia,” which tells the true story of a North Carolina man who had a massive stroke at age 44, will be screened at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the East Carolina Heart Institute at East Carolina University, 115 Heart Drive. The movie stars Carl McIntyre of Laurinburg, an actor who had a stroke in 2005. As a result, McIntyre lives with aphasia, an acquired communication disorder that impairs a person's ability to process language but does not affect intelligence. Free. Visit www.aphasiathemovie.com. Contact Sherri Winslow at 744-6142 or email winslowsh@ecu.edu.

Brain-injured artists show life's reflections

2011-04-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

BRAIN-INJURED ARTISTS SHOW LIFE'S REFLECTIONS

Sandra Madden of Douglas shows her color photo “Native Child.” She took the picture on a visit to Plimoth Plantation. (T&G Staff Photos/CHRISTINE PETERSON)

By Priyanka Dayal TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

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"Winter Calm" by Sandra Madden shows a field in the Blackstone Valley.
Enlarge photo

It's a simple scene: a baby nestled inside a pouch around his mother's belly, sleeping.

His eyes are softly closed, his head leaning against his mother.

It's a scene of calm, of tranquility, captured through Sandra Madden's camera lens. That feeling of peace is what Ms. Madden loves about the photo. That feeling of peace is something she was missing for a while after a bicycle accident nearly five years ago changed her life.

She was riding her bicycle near her home in Douglas when she lost control for a second. She fell off the bike and onto her back. more read...

National Aphasia Association: A Night At The Theater To See “Wings”

2011-02-13T07:16:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago in our Perspectives series we interviewed the Program Director of the Snyder Center for Aphasia Life Enhancement (SCALE) in Baltimore, Denise McCall, and the Technology Coordinator, Jes Porro. That story grew so rich that we set up an interview with Ellayne Ganzfried, Executive Director of the National Aphasia Association, which will appear in our next installment of Perspectives. In that interview, Ellayne was especially proud of her association’s work with Second Stage Theater in New York City, which has reprised the 1978 play “Wings,” written by Arthur Kopit. On Tuesday, November 2nd, Second Stage Theater and the NAA have teamed up for an evening of outreach and fundraising through the play. Next.....

National Gallery Innovative Art Project For Stroke Suvivors to Restore Creativity | Art Knowledge News

2010-08-19T17:21:00.000-07:00

National Gallery Innovative Art Project For Stroke Suvivors to Restore Creativity | Art Knowledge News
LONDON.- An innovative art project developed by the National Gallery is giving a group of stroke survivors the chance to get their creative juices flowing. Ageing Creatively is an outreach programme that aims to make it possible for people who may be isolated, vulnerable or unable to visit the Gallery independently, to access and enjoy the collection. During November, members of the Greenhill Aphasia Group took part in four outreach workshops at the Greenhill Centre in Newham. Aphasia is a difficulty speaking or understanding speech, reading or writing. It occurs following damage to the brain and is most common after a stroke.

Participants worked with artist Viyki Turnbull to create still-life drawings and paintings.

For this project – titled “The Real and Unreal” – the group looked at images of still-life paintings in the National Gallery’s permanent collection and compared and contrasted the different approaches that artists have taken....next

Hannah Mumblings

2010-08-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

Today I helped hang an exhibition at Newcastle University Ex Libris Gallery, which shows work produced by people with Aphasia.

Aphasia is a communication and language impairment which is most commonly caused when a person's brain is damaged by a stroke. Aphasia often makes it difficult to process words, especially in sentences, whether they be written, read or spoken.

Next....

Aphasia chosen as Official Selection of Big Bear Lake International Film Festival in California

2010-08-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

For Immediate Release

For more information or for interviews please contact
Donna Scott, donnascott@hotmail.com

Aphasia chosen as Official Selection of Big Bear Lake International Film Festival in California

Aphasia will screen September 2010

CHARLOTTE, N.C. July 30, 2010 … The short film Aphasia has been chosen as an Official Selection of the Big Bear Lake International Film Festival and will be shown in Big Bear, CA in September 2010.

Magic Words

2010-08-16T11:24:00.001-07:00

Spellbound = Aphasic?
Is to be spellbound to experience aphasia?

"She stood silent, motionless, spellbound. Words had lost all meaning."
—Mary Stewart, Unspotted from the World (1897)

Saul Bellow Writes a Love Letter, and Considers Heaven

2010-04-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve become forgetful, too. Nothing like your father’s nominal aphasia. I find I can’t remember the names of people I don’t care for—in some ways a pleasant disability. I further discover that I would remember people’s names because it relieved me from any need to think about them. Their names were enough. Like telling heads. NEXT....

Ottawa artist recognized for work with aphasia sufferers

2010-04-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

Until he started volunteering at the Aphasia Centre of Ottawa two years ago, Jeffrey Burns had no idea how much he had in common with people suffering from aphasia, a disturbance in processing or understanding language due to brain damage, often from a stroke.

But the Ottawa artist quickly discovered that, like him, people with aphasia often rely on a visual language to express themselves. Instead of speaking, reading or writing, they count on pictures to do the talking for them. “I value images very much, as well as the written word and the poetics of language, so I really understand how frustrating it must be to have difficulty with those things,” said Burns.

Fluent Aphasia (Wernicke Aphasia) Symptoms

2010-04-17T19:14:00.000-07:00

This form of aphasia is caused due to damage to the middle left region of the brain, where the language network exists. It is called fluent aphasia because people suffering from this form of speech disorder have the ability to speak long, complex sentences fluently, however, these sentences often make no logical sense and are strings of inappropriately used or unrecognizable words. They cannot understand what others are saying properly and fail to see that others cannot understand what they are trying to say.Next...

maybe Aphasia ?

2009-12-06T12:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sokollatos/

2009-10-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

As amnesia strikes, ‘Fuddy’ equals funny By Nancy Van Valkenburg

2009-09-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

By Nancy Van Valkenburg (Standard-Examiner staff)

Last Edit: 1 day 10 hours ago (Sep 24 2009 - 10:10pm)

Imagine waking up refreshed and carefree.

Plagued by no wistful regrets, no bad decisions. Free of haunting childhood memories and thoughts of relationships turned sour.

Unable to recall your own name, or fathom where you might be or the identity of the man sitting on your bed.

And wondering if you should trust the stranger’s explanation.

It happens to Claire, the amnesiac in “Fuddy Meers,” David Lindsay-Abaire’s dark farce/mystery opening next Friday at Weber State University.

“In a way, her amnesia is kind of a blessing to her,” said Stephanie Purcell, 21, an Ogden resident who plays the upbeat heroine. “It takes away any doubts she has about herself. She is the most honest character, with herself and others. She’s not hiding anything, at least consciously. She is open to everything that comes to her.”

Besides the man on the bed, who turns out to be husband Richard, people who come into Claire’s world include:
# A foul-mouthed young man, Kenny, who may be her son. next................

Night Sky Grade: C+

2009-07-19T14:11:00.000-07:00

By Susan Yankowitz. Directed by Daniella Topol. At the Baruch College Performing Arts Cetner. (CLOSED)

The only consensus in this show's set of reviews is that Jordan Baker-- last seen in New York in Three Tall Women-- is the tops. Beyond that, reviewers detec NEXT...

Theater Review: 'Night Sky'

2009-07-17T12:40:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK—Being trapped inside your own head, unable to let anyone know what you're really thinking is what playwright Susan Yankowitz taps into—this deep and universal fear—in her powerful drama "Night Sky."

Anna (Jordan Baker) is a respected astronomer who teaches, publishes, and is always pushing herself to the limit—so much so she sometimes neglects the needs of her family.

Said family consists of teenage daughter Jennifer (Lauren Ashley Carter) and longtime live-in opera singer boyfriend Daniel (Jim Stanek). Anna’s continual prodding is also the reason Daniel's career is finally starting to take off.
NEXT....

NOW I CANNOT SPEAK. I LOST MY VOICE. I'M SPECHLESS AND REDUNDANT.

2009-04-29T13:34:00.000-07:00

Rain might now taste like lemon
But your eyes are still the same
They've still got their demon
And I've still got your semen
In my mind
And in my mouth

You put your finger
And I like it so much....next...

Tate Group Exhibition Explores the Themes of Disruption and Discontinuity within Processes

2009-04-28T20:48:00.001-07:00

Anna Barham, Replanted images 2008. Courtesy of the artist. Copyright: the artist.

LONDON.- Stutter, the latest exhibition in Tate Modern ’s Level 2 programme, explores the themes of disruption and discontinuity within processes of thought and language. The group show features works by international contemporary artists Sven Augustijnen, Anna Barham, Dominique Petitgand, Michael Riedel, Will Stuart and Michelangelo Pistoletto and includes a wide range of media, ranging from sculpture, work on paper and video, to performance and sound. The exhibition’s title, Stutter, comes from the onomatopoetic word for an interrupted act of speech.

Level 2 is Tate Modern’s space for emerging artists, dedicated to experiment and the latest ideas, themes and trends in international contemporary art.

Sven Augustijnen’s films Johan and Francois 2001 are intimate portraits of people suffering from aphasia, the loss of the ability to produce or comprehend language. Augustijnen’s skilfully edited documentaries gradually reveal the thoughts and memories of the patients and allow the viewer to access a world that is shaped by the experience of fragmentation and degradation.

The centrepiece of Anna Barham’s contribution to Stutter is a sculpture comprised of fluorescent tubes, orchestrated by computer codes. Creating an infinite number of flickering pulses, A Splintered Game 2008 manipulates ideas of geometry, structures and combinations as a way to illustrate and reveal thought processes. The installation is surrounded by seven of Barham’s drawings that show her interest in the potential of words and anagrams to create elaborate forms and to trigger images and narratives in the viewer’s imagination.

In a new spatial configuration, Dominique Petitgand presents Someone on the ground 2005-2006, where recordings of words, pauses, breaths and noise merge into layers of voice and sound, structured by break ups and cuts. Played back from various spaces in the gallery, this installation takes place alongside and simultaneous to other works in the exhibition, overarching and setting them in relation, creating tensions between speech and noise, figuration and abstraction.

Will Stuart (Will Holder and Stuart Bailey) present one of Michelangelo Pistoletto's Minus Objects from 1966, Structure for talking while standing. They challenge Pistoletto’s artwork through accompanying texts, exploring the use and significance of Pistoletto’s piece within the context of both the exhibition and Will Stuart’s intervention.

Michael Riedel presents an entirely new work, which arises out of an array of gaps, elisions and errors. These result from a complex process of editing video footage of film screenings, recorded over a period of many months, into a frenetic trailer lasting just eight minutes.

The exhibition is curated by Nicholas Cullinan and Vanessa Desclaux. next.............

Big Man Tries Beckett

2009-04-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

IN his dressing room last week John Goodman stood up, emitted a long, blaring foghorn blast and then announced in a loudspeaker voice, “Now docking. ...” He was describing his Act I entrance as Pozzo, his first theatrical role in four years, in the Roundabout Theater Company production of “Waiting for Godot,” which opens April 30 at Studio 54.

Mr. Goodman is a big man — he’s 6 foot 3, and his weight these days hovers around 300 pounds — and in his Pozzo getup he seems even bigger. He wears a derby, boots and a voluminous riding suit with jodhpurs, and when he comes onstage, at the end of a long rope attached to his hapless slave, Lucky (played by John Glover ), he does seem a bit like an ocean liner. Vladimir and Estragon (played by Bill Irwin and Nathan Lane ) look astonished, and rightly so.

Pozzo is the least sympathetic and in some ways the trickiest character in “Godot.” He cruelly mistreats Lucky, and yet he is as lost and vulnerable as all the others. He is “an insecure gasbag who needs to be listened to and have things done for him,” as Mr. Goodman put it. “He’s like the Macy’s blimp no one wants to look at.” Pozzo spouts a lot of fustian and hot air, and Mr. Goodman said he was still trying to figure out the right voice for it. His Pozzo speaks in a deep, Goodmanesque rumble but with a lordly British accent.

“It’s just a voice I heard in my head,” Mr. Goodman explained, “along with all the other voices there — the barking dogs and the rest. I need to make it more distinctly American, sort of like Bill Buckley. I’m trying to make it more a patrician Yankee voice, but I worry that’s not going to sell. It’s going to sound like a bad English accent. So it’s something I’m still searching for.”

.....next...........

http://www.nightskytheplay.com/

2009-04-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

PERFORMANCES BEGIN MAY 20TH!

NIGHT SKY explores what the noted author and physicist Steven Hawking has called the two remaining mysteries -- the brain and the cosmos. When she is a struck by a car, the brilliant and articulate astronomer Anna loses her ability to speak. In place of conventional speech, she expresses herself in a hodge-podge of unconnected words that are alternately poetic, funny, confusing and profound, and sometimes all four --a little-known medical condition called 'aphasia' -- resulting in a rich new language which, indeed, can communicate, but only if one listens in a manner equally new.
At the same time that it considers the varied ways through which we communicate with one another, NIGHT SKY movingly dramatizes the resilience of the human spirit in crisis, as a woman, her family, her career and life's work are put to a powerful test.

eTuesday - Fri 8pm
Saturday 3pm & 8pm
Sunday 3pm

May 20 - June 20, 2009
At Baruch College Performing Arts Center
All preview tickets Regular tickets
May 20 - May 30, Only $45! $45 & $65
Same day Rush $25 Same day Rush $25

For information about Night Sky or about tickets,
please contact us at:
646-290-7897
Or
Info@nightskytheplay.com

For more information about aphasia and
the National Aphasia Association,
please visit www.aphasia.org

NightSkyThePlay.com Designed & Maintained by Ronn(i.e.) designs

Baker, Stanek, Milligan Will Explore Night Sky, a Play About Aphasia, Off-Broadway

2009-04-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

By Kenneth Jones
20 Apr 2009

Jordan Baker, of Off-Broadway's Three Tall Women, will play an astronomer who loses the ability to speak in Susan Yankowitz's Night Sky, to play Off-Broadway starting May 22.

Opening is June 2 in the Rose Nagelberg Theatre at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Ave., in Manhattan.

Daniella Topol (Palace of the End in NYC) directs the production, presented Off-Broadway by Stan Raiff/Power Productions (Irena's Vow) in association with the National Aphasia Association.

Baker returns to the New York stage after a 15-year absence. She was last seen there in the 1993 original cast of Edward Albee's Three Tall Women opposite Marian Seldes and Myra Carter.

According to production notes, "Night Sky explores what the noted author and physicist Steven Hawking has called the two remaining mysteries — the brain and the cosmos — as the play looks at what happens to a bright, articulate astronomer, her family and her career when she is struck by a car and loses her ability to speak conventionally, a condition known as 'aphasia.' As she is left to expresses herself in an alternately funny, poetic, confusing and profound hodge-podge of words, astronomer Anna, her daughter, fiancé and colleagues face uncommon challenges of the mind and spirit as they discover new ways to communicate, and what it really means to listen."

Also featured in the cast of Night Sky are Jim Stanek, Tuck Milligan, Lauren Ashley Carter, Dan Domingues and Darlesia Cearcy.

The play is "inspired by and dedicated to the memory of the late, revered actor, director, playwright and founder of the Open Theatre, Joseph Chaikin, himself affected with aphasia following a stroke in 1984," according to the producers. "Having recovered sufficiently to continue writing, directing and performing until his death in 2003, Mr. Chaikin commissioned Ms. Yankowitz to write a play that dealt with aphasia."

Since leaving New York, Baker has appeared on several television series including as a regular on "The New Adventures of the Old Christine" opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus, along with roles on "Brothers and Sisters," "Medium," "Cold Case," "Without a Trace," "The O.C.," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Passions," "Gilmore Girls" and "Still Standing."

Yankowitz is a playwright, novelist, lyricist and librettist. Her plays include Phaedra in Delirium (Classic Stage Company/The Women's Project), winner of the QRL poetic play competition; Terminal and 1969 Terminal 1996 (collaborations with Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatre); Slain in Spirit, a gospel-and-blues opera with music by Taj Mahal; Cheri, an opera/music theatre work with Michael Dellaira (finalist for the 2006 Richard Rogers Award and a featured opera at the 2006 Opera America New Works Sampler, to be produced at Long Leaf Opera in 2012); and bookwriter/lyricist of True Romances, a musical fantasia with Elmer Bernstein.

Night Sky will run Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 PM; Saturdays at 3 PM and 8 PM, and Sundays at 3 PM (with an added performance on June 1 at 8 PM and no performance on June 3).

All tickets during previews are $45, and will range $25-$65 after opening. There will be a limited number of $25 Student Rush tickets available for each performance. Tickets go on sale May 1. For reservations, call (212) 352-3101 or visit www.NightSkyThePlay.com.

*

The month of June is National Aphasia Awareness Month. It is estimated that over one million Americans have aphasia — the sudden inability to communicate, speak, read, write or understand language. Noted figures who have experienced "aphasia" include cinematographer Sven Nykvist, poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, composer Maurice Ravel, ABC-TV reporter Bob Woodruff and Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota.  

2nd Story Theatre tackles domestic abuse with offbeat Fuddy Meers

2008-06-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, May 8, 2008
By Channing Gray

Journal Arts Writer

Paula Faber digs deep during rehearsal for the comedy Fuddy Meers, which opens May 9 at Warren’s 2nd Story Theatre.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

Paula Faber might as well be speaking a foreign language. In 2nd Story Theatre’s soon-to-open production of Fuddy Meers, Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire’s offbeat take on domestic abuse, Faber plays a stroke victim suffering from aphasia, a condition that has left her speech garbled.

Her words come out twisted and broken. In a typical moment, Faber’s Gertie says, “Dusha riddle dimsum da my hempoo.”

Faber’s fellow cast members know what that means, because a translation has been provided at the back of the script for the actors. What Gertie was trying to say was, “Just a little something that might help you.”

But the audience won’t have the benefit of a translation. So it’s up to Faber to get the meaning of her distorted phrases across through things like inflection, intonation and the occasional discreet gesture, like pointing to a door. Trying to act out situations like a game of charades would be far too heavy handed.

“It’s been a huge challenge,” said Faber, who met with a speech pathologist and a couple of psychiatrists to prepare for the role.

The first challenge for Faber was just memorizing Gertie’s scrambled utterances. That took extra hours, as she said the lines over and over to her dogs. But just learning the phonetic sound of the words has not been enough, Faber has found. She has had to learn to show the frustration and anger someone like Gertie must feel.

“I spent a lot of time learning my lines as they are written out,” said Faber, who has been acting with 2nd Story since the theater opened in Warren in 2001, “and that has almost been a problem. Now it’s a matter of not making them so accurate and precise. I have to make them sound more realistic.

“Now the challenge is to make it more difficult, so these words are not just flowing out. For Gertie, everything is a struggle.”

That process was addressed last week in rehearsal, as Gertie called the police and tried to alert them that an escaped convict was holed up in her house.

“Isis Geht Maso,” she whispers into the phone, as she tries to say, “This is Gertie Mason.” “Fee cape” (“Philip escaped”). “Eesh ina hiss” (“He’s in the house”).

But her delivery was too straightforward, too much like someone rattling off phrases in another language. Director Ed Shea wanted her to convey more of the struggle and frustration she must feel, as she tried to communicate with people who can’t understand her. He wanted her to chew on the words more, to make the whole process seem more arduous.

Faber said that by the end of rehearsal she was ready to throw the phone down on the floor.

“I can feel my center being given over to that struggle,” said Shea.

“You get right in there with her, and your stomach tightens, your breath quickens and you work with her.”

The trick with portraying Gertie is that she can’t appear “ditzy,” said Shea. This is a woman with her mental faculties intact, but whose speech has been affected.

“She’s not unaware at all,” said Shea. “Halfway through the play, she says I wish I could have said some things when I could, which is a very sweet moment.”

Fuddy Meers (it means “funny mirrors,” as in the body-distorting kind found in funhouses) is Lindsay-Abaire’s first play, written while a protégé of Christopher Durang at Juilliard. His assignment was to bring in 10 pages a week, so he wrote the play like a serialized Dickens novel, leaving cliff-hangers along the way.

It debuted in 1999 at the Manhattan Theatre Club to sold-out audiences and mostly positive critical responses. And it helped establish the playwright as someone with a keen eye for people with extreme afflictions who have had their lives upended.

In Kimberly Akimbo, a teenager suffering from premature aging looks like a 70-year-old woman. Her dad is an alcoholic who works in a gas station, her mother is a pregnant hypochondriac with a foul mouth. In the play, an elderly actress engages in a budding romance with a 16-year-old boy.

Lindsay-Abaire won the Pulitzer last year for Rabbit Hole, which is about a couple grieving the death of their four-year-old son, who was struck by a car.

While it may seem odd, maybe even a little cruel to write a comedy about someone suffering from the effects of a stroke, Lindsay-Abaire sort of specializes in plays in which we find ourselves embarrassed to laugh at the misfortunes of others, but can’t quite help ourselves.

“You’ll laugh your head off,” said Shea, “and then say, ‘I really shouldn’t be laughing at this.’ ”

Gertie is not the only person in this wacky comedy suffering from a medical condition, either. There is Gertie’s daughter Claire, who has a rare form of amnesia. Each morning she wakes as a blank slate, and has to read a book her husband has prepared outlining the high points of her life.

Before long, Claire is kidnapped by a half-blind, half-deaf limping man with a pronounced lisp, who has just escaped from prison and tells Claire that her husband is trying to kill her. He takes her to Gertie’s house along with fellow prisoner Millet, a weirdo with a puppet.

Claire’s husband, Richard, and her drug-addict son, Kenny, eventually show up, along with Heidi, a prison cook who is masquerading as a cop. What follows are moments of mayhem and a raft of revelations.

The play is something of a mystery. It’s only in dribs and drabs that we learn what has happened to these battered and impaired characters. There is a point at which Gertie explains all the sordid details of their lives to Claire, but her speech is so muddled that Claire, who understands most of what her mother says, can’t make it out — nor can the audience. And that’s because at that point in the play, we’re not supposed to know all that’s going on, said Shea. We have to wait to learn Claire’s secret.

Nevertheless, Shea feels the audience will understand most of what Gertie says.

“Very slowly, your ear becomes attuned to that language,” he said, “and you start to understand it. By the end of the play you start to get it.”

Fuddy Meers opens in previews tomorrow and runs through June 8 at 2nd Story Theatre, 28 Market St., Warren. Tickets are $10 for previews (May 9-10), and $25 for all other performances. Call (401) 247-4200.

MORE REVIEWS of what’s playing at area stages: Projo.com/theater

Review: 'Fuddy Meers" at 2nd Story Theater

2008-06-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

sunday, May 18, 2008; Posted: 6:51 PM - by Randy Rice

The Musical Mystery

2008-03-16T14:11:00.001-07:00

Music is so ubiquitous and ancient in the human species—so integral to our nature—that we must be born to respond to it: there must be a music instinct. Just as we naturally take to language, as a matter of our innate endowment, so must music have a specific genetic basis, and be part of the very structure of the human brain.

An unmusical alien would be highly perplexed by our love of music—and other terrestrial species are left cold by what so transports us. Music is absolutely normal for members of our species, but utterly quirky.[1] Moreover, it is known that music activates almost all the human brain: the sensory centers, the prefrontal cortex that underlies rational functions, the emotional areas (cerebellum, amygdala, and nucleus accumbens), the hippocampus for memory, and the motor cortex for movement. When you listen to a piece of music your brain is abuzz with intense neural activity.

Losing, Finding Language: Audience will be inside injured woman's head as she struggles

2008-03-16T14:08:00.000-07:00

Emily Stilson once walked on airplane wings - while the airplane was flying. But long after the barnstorming days of her youth, she suffered a stroke. Now, she grapples with what has happened to her.

Wings, Wake Forest University Theatre’s season-opener, is an exploration of Stilson’s journey - from inside her own thinking and her attempts to understand.

Arthur Kopit, a three-time Tony Award nominee, has described his play as “an adventure, a quest, a mystery.”

Cindy Gendrich, an associate professor of theater at WFU and the play’s director, said, “It’s not a tragedy.” She likes Kopit’s own definition - an adventure.

doonesbury

2008-03-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

Rabbit Hole is darker and deeper than advertised

2008-01-17T16:33:00.000-08:00

Rabbit Hole
Manbites Dog Theater
After great pain, a formal feeling

Through Dec. 22

(Left to right) Marcia Edmundson, Derrick Ivey and Katja Hill in Rabbit Hole
Photo by Alan Dehmer
We can understand why Rabbit Hole won this year's Pulitzer Prize for drama. Much like the Orphean myth alluded to in one of its closing sequences, the play follows a married couple, Becca and Howie, through the emotional underworld of grief, some eight months after the accidental death of their small child, Danny.

The veritas of their icy, brittle exchanges, with mooky or boorish relatives and each other, convincingly conveys the formal feeling that Emily Dickinson once wrote of as coming after death; a dynamic that artistic director Jeff Storer fully explores in this Manbites Dog Theater production with noted actors Katja Hill and Derrick Ivey. All in all, these qualities make this a show worthy of superlatives—but one also requiring a consumers' advisory as well along the way.

By now, regional theater-goers have come to associate playwright David Lindsay-Abaire with a series of screwball comedies, largely predicated on medical quirks or psychological disabilities. In Manbites Dog's rewarding 2001 production of Fuddy Meers, the playwright found improbably appealing slapstick in characters with aphasia and psychogenic amnesia while, a couple of years after, Actors Comedy Lab's Wonder of the World hinged on an outlandish sexual dysfunction or two. Though Kimberly Akimbo has not been produced locally, its world premiere during the 2000 National Critics Institute completely disarmed an audience of hard-nosed theater insiders as it explored the dysfunctions of a family dealing with a daughter with progeria, the accelerated aging disease. Need we note that none of these situations provides the most easily minable terrain for comedy?

Milky Way Liberation Front

2008-01-17T16:07:00.000-08:00

After receiving strong word of mouth at this year’s Pusan International Film Festival, Seong-ho Yoon’s “Milky Way Liberation Front” opened in theatres on November 29, 2007 in South Korea. The movie offers a unique premise of a filmmaker suffering from writer’s block, but having a vague idea for a story revolving around a man afflicted with aphasia. In a ironic twist of fate, the filmmaker in the movie travels to the Pusan International Film Festival, where the actual movie had its world premiere. The movie was shot entirely in HD and features many unconventional moments (actors laughing over their lines, etc). Looks promising indeed.
Program Note from Pusan International Film Festival : Director Yoon Seongho has been representing a new style and ideas of the digital generation through many digital shorts. The lead character Young-jae, who resembles the director, hopes to become a movie director. However, he breaks up with his girlfriend Eun-ha, so the script doesn’t progress, and the fund situation isn’t too bright. On top of all these obstacles, he suffers from aphasia. Fortunately, his ventriloquist actor helps him in a crisis, but even so the situation turns for the worse and gets out of control. Director Yoon Seongho has often mixed love affairs with the allegory of contemporary society in his previous films. This film also exhibits the same structure and adds authentic humor and dialogue in each scene. His unique talent for light-hearted humor makes us look forward to his future works.

The Count of Monte Cristo

2007-12-12T07:52:00.000-08:00

(The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

Noirtier de Villefort — The father of Gérard de Villefort and grandfather of Valentine. After suffering an apoplectic stroke, Noirtier becomes mute and a quadriplegic, but can communicate with Valentine and his servant Barrois through use of his eyelids and eyes. Although utterly dependent on others, he saves Valentine from the poison of her stepmother and her undesired marriage to Baron Franz d'Epinay. Throughout his life he was a Bonapartist – an ardent French Revolutionary. Gérard de Villefort had realized that Edmond intended to fulfill his dying captain's last wish by conveying a letter from the imprisoned Napoleon to Noirtier, and therefore imprisoned Edmond in order to hide that fact, which might have hindered Gérard's advancement.

The rewritten life of Harold Robbins

2007-11-21T11:31:00.000-08:00

"He admitted that he wrote only for money and cared nothing for style or the contempt of the critics. 'I'm the best writer around,' he told me, 'and I don't wanna be remembered after I'm dead. Once I'm dead, I'm dead. I've told Grace when it happens to put my ashes in a locket and wear it between her breasts. I'd like to hang there for the rest of time.'

Sadly, Grace divorced him and his ashes lie instead today in a book-shaped casket in Palm Springs, where he ended his days jaded and disillusioned in bloated agony, in a wheelchair, suffering from a stroke, aphasia, broken bones, heart trouble and emphysema."

next....

Aphasia

2007-11-21T08:39:00.001-08:00

Aphasia

There is that ambivalent silence
That lingers, floating in the air.
No words are spoken- hushed she lies in the corner
Her room once lit with swirling colors.
Befallen with darkness, a nightingale sings
Its melody alluring- a rise in her senses.
But no, the tears tell it all
Of which appear ironed to her cheeks.
Closed porcelain eyes, mouth pursed into a tight line
Left with a sealed stamp of aphasia

Ulysses

2007-11-17T15:35:00.000-08:00

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

My Aphasia By Cory Paul Harrison

2007-10-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

You are my aphasia.
I live and die on you.
You are my depression,
My ecstasy,
You are the black in me,
You are the best in me.

I need your skin, I feel your truth,
I live to be a part of you. Next.........

Aphasia Poetry

2007-09-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

With all that’s been going on with Carol’s mother and the deaths over this last year, I have not thought consciously at least that much of Brother Dan’s stroke. I have managed to see him nearly every week—not as frequently lately as school and getting ready for it approaches, but the other day he sent me some aphasia poetry. Because that’s what he has—though it is getting better—aphasia. Anyway that made me remember; and realize too that I have not really forgotten about it.

I have had lately memory problems; the result I expect of no more than aging. But I spoke with a colleague the other day whose mother, only in her mid seventies, is showing signs of Alzheimer. He went to where she lives—for a while during the summer—to spell his father who was becoming worn out from tending his mother. Amazing, to think, I think: of the memory just going. Not just forgetting but not even knowing that one has forgotten.

I can’t imagine what that might be like: like drifting up in the clouds perhaps, unattached, with a bottomless pit right below. Especially when the short term goes; you might wash your face over and over, forgetting as you blink your eyes, each time that you had forgotten.

I think this just incomprehensible: to lose your mind in this way; and not even know that you have lost it because the mind is just the brain in situ. One might know, by means of the brain that one has lost one’s arm or one’s sight or that one is losing one’s strength. But when the mind itself is being lost there is nothing to know the loss.

I get cold with fear thinking about it. And wondering if that loss waits around the corner for me.

But this is what Brother Dan, in a different form, has been struggling with for eight months now. Does he have problems with memory? Maybe yes, maybe no. Certainly not of the short term kind, and if of the long term, I don’t know. When he says something is 12,000 dollars and he meant 1200 dollars, did he forget that it was just 1200 or did his mind misspeak, mistaking 12000 for 1200. I don’t know if he would know, or if I would know, for that matter, unless somebody had been there to say otherwise, because at times at least I don’t think he knows he has misspoken.

They say the intelligence of the aphasiac is frequently unimpaired. But how would one know. How could you give a cat a test to see if it is going blind, since he cannot tell you want it sees. I think Dan’s intelligence is unimpaired. But were he to take some sort of verbal comprehension test he would do poorly I think.

Here are a few lines of his aphasia poetry—that he titles “halo ended”--which he said was OK for me to put on the blog:

You can take it in your tung. Your effectiveness. Your dreams. I can hold it thus. Thus is mine. Mine. Do you want it to me yours? I will give it to you. My thoughts, my actions thus thus thusly for us. In my friend, my pozole, my poseque, my POS. We wait, we wait for a positive reaction to my heart. We wait for a plant operator selection system. We wait. Can we do it? Can my heart take it? My bubbles?

*Ҝrayle_||ж||_Ҝeary† DILEMMA

2007-09-27T12:53:00.001-07:00

Lucky: Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a person God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labors left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry of Essy-in-Possy of Testew and Cunard it is established beyond all doubt all other doubt than that which clings to the labors of men that as a result of the labors unfinished of Testew and Cunnard it is established as hereinafter but not so fast for reasons unknown that as a result of the public works of Puncher and Wattmann it is established beyond all doubt that in view of the labors of Fartov and Belcher left unfinished for reasons unknown of Testew and Cunard left unfinished it is established what many deny that man in Possy of Testew and Cunard that man in Essy that man in short that man in brief in spite of the strides of alimentation and defecation wastes and pines wastes and pines and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicillin and succedanea in a word I resume flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham namely concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown but time will tell fades away I resume Fulham Clapham in a word the dead loss per head since the death of Bishop Berkeley being to the tune of one inch four ounce per head approximately by and large more or less to the nearest decimal good measure round figures stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara in a word for reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there and considering what is more much more grave that in the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman it appears what is more much more grave that in the light the light the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman that in the plains in the mountains by the seas by the rivers running water running fire the air is the same and then the earth namely the air and then the earth in the great cold the great dark the air and the earth abode of stones in the great cold alas alas in the year of their Lord six hundred and something the air the earth the sea the earth abode of stones in the great deeps the great cold on sea on land and in the air I resume for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis the facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short in fine on on abode of stones who can doubt it I resume but not so fast I resume the skull fading fading fading and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis on on the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labors abandoned left unfinished graver still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard (mêlée, final vociferations) . . . tennis . . . the stones . . . so calm . . . Cunard . . . unfinished . . .

talking to strangers

2007-08-18T18:10:00.001-07:00

View ♥Rebecca♥'s map

Taken in (See more photos here )

While shooting portraits in the shade of the gazebo at the depot in Newton, we met this really nice couple. She had childhood roots in the area and they were visiting, seeing what had changed since her childhood visits. As good southerners are prone to do, we talked for an hour. They were a sweet couple, married 21 years, very happy. :-)

I don't know why my mama told me not to talk to strangers. You hear the best stories that way.

Talking

2007-08-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

View Rocco Palermo's map

Taken in (See more photos here )

Ilaria and Carlo talking on a bench

.Let's Talk.

2007-08-18T18:03:00.001-07:00

View justforgetheworld' s map

Taken in (See more photos here)

are you lost or incomplete?
do you feel like a puzzle
you can't find your missing piece?
tell me how do you feel?
well, I feel like they're talking in a language I don't speak...
and they're talking it to me...♫♪♫♪

talk to me

2007-08-18T17:59:00.001-07:00

View frame of ozz's map

Taken in (See more photos here)

There's a silence surrounding me
I can't seem to think straight
I'll sit in the corner
No one will bother me
I think I should speak now ______________________ Why won't you talk to me
I can't seem to speak now ________________________You never talk to me
My words won't come out right ___________________ What are you thinking
I feel like I'm drowning ____________________________ What are you feeling
I'm feeling weak now ____________________________Why won't you talk to me
But I can't show my weakness _____________________ You never talk to me
I sometimes wonder ___________________________ What are you thinking
Where do we go from here _________________________ What are you feeling

Pink Floyd, Keep Talking

It was only the crack (not artificial) when I took this photo and right now, after two years i took it, it gave me its message...

hand on the shoulder..

note: this is a cleared version, i removed the old one..

Aphasia

2007-07-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

Apashia
brought unto a ceaseless wrath of confusion.
Lost? The word brings no justice!
The fusion of all the emotions sent forth
can bring you to your knees.
So lift up from this cold ground,
find the light, climb these dark halls,
this maze clouded by fear.
Please phase through this!

Dapper Ed

ON THE BILL: Louis Smith performance will be part of his therapy

2007-06-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

Sunday, May 27, 2007

BY ROGER LELIEVRE

News Arts Writer

Fans and friends of Ann Arbor trumpeter and educator Louis Smith, who had a stroke a year and a half ago, will be delighted to know that his therapy at the University of Michigan Residential Aphasia Program has progressed to such an extent he will be able to perform at an event marking the 60th anniversary of the aphasia program Saturday at the Michigan Theater.

"This is part of his speech therapy,'' said Smith's wife, Lulu. "As music is on the right side and communication is on the left side of the brain, this is a way to get him to start to communicate and talk. Louis' left brain was affected by the stroke.''

The songs he will sing are "On the Sunny Side of the Street,'' "It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing'' and "Georgia.'' "The remarkable thing is he can sing these words but not speak them,'' Lulu Smith added.
NEXT.......................................

ON THE LOT

2007-06-04T18:08:00.001-07:00

Anybody who’s had dealings with small children knows the importance of “the pitch” — the succinct, attractive, punchy, mentally digestible presentation of a new idea. Faced with a frowning toddler, you have about six seconds to make the sale, and it has to be as sweet and as tight as a radio jingle. You will be pitilessly scanned for irregular body language, unevenness of tone, and pupil dilation. The air is electric with feral mistrust. If you start sweating, if they smell your fear — it’s over. Such was the predicament of the 50 apprentice filmmakers gathered in the premiere episode of Steven Spielberg & Mark Burnett’s ON THE LOT (Fox, Tuesday at 9 pm), since their first challenge was to pitch a movie idea to the Hollywood triumvirate of Garry Marshall, Carrie Fisher, and Brett Ratner. The hopefuls were touchingly hopeless: they dried up into gaping silence, or ranted like prophets, in visionary isolation. Jeremy Corray, expounding upon a torture scene that formed the centerpiece of a film he planned to call Synergilistic, took off his belt and thrashed the floor. “Mickey Castellucci is a run-of-the-mill New York mobster,” began another contestant, more promisingly, “but for the last 10 years, he’s been informing for the FBI. One day he wakes up and he’s turned into a six-foot-two-inch 300-pound mouse.” Quality stuff so far, but here — eclipsed, perhaps, by the brilliance of his own conceit — the pitcher appeared to enter some sort of fugue state or light aphasia. Suddenly, no more words: some helpless movements of the hands, and a bit of rocking back and forth. The judges looked at one another. “Then . . . ?” prompted Garry Marshall, to no effect.

The Way Back Home Info & Events

2007-06-04T16:39:00.000-07:00

Back Home Productions announces MY BEST FRIEND (2007)

Eight year old Jeremiah Henson discovers hope, courage, and inner strength
from a rescue dog named Clyde. After the death of his brother to a rare form
of pneumonia and learning that his parents are separating, it is the
scraggly Clyde that saves the Henson family and makes them see how blessed
they really are.

Desire Love The Visible Reality The Poem

2007-06-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

Desire as a creative force and love as a maintaining force . . . I enjoy conceptualizing things in such ways.

I hope this is helpful, or at least interesting. It will be in two parts. This is part one. Part two, if it ever actually happens, will be later. I, perhaps rashly, put in a course title for this coming fall, which is Poetry As Mystery, now I’m trying to work up how I will actually present such an unwieldy thing. I’m brainstorming.

I’m interested, currently, less in the compositional process from blank paper, than I am the compositional process of revision. That seems to me a profitable place to think about mystery. It’s obvious that there’s mystery to a blank piece of paper, but usually in the revision process we hear words like “clarity,” etc. “Clarity” is a great word, as it reveals “clarity of design,” but I think rather than that, “clarity” usually gets reduced to “Make it Clear” in the Lowest Common Denominator of public speech sort of way. “Make it Clear?” I look around me, and, though the images of the yard are “clear,” they are not in any way “clearly meaning” one thing, they simply are, and in their beingness, they contain large amounts of mystery. Mystery of human interaction, mystery of simply being there at all. So how does one keep oneself open to such mystery, without it being a trick or a who-done-it? Or, equally problematic, how to factor in the true difficulty of being without falling into aphasia? The two sides equally threaten, as one tries to negotiate, in some honest way, the mystery inherent in living.

Next.......................................

Kooser charms crowd with precise verse

2007-05-19T17:05:00.001-07:00

KAREN RIVERS
Tribune Staff Writer

First, a poet captures you with a moment. Then, he applies pressure.

And finally -- ah -- there is a release.

He lets you out.

This is how Ted Kooser -- a Pulitzer-Prize winner and two-time Poet Laureate -- explained the experience of poetry during his reading Friday night at the Dogwood Fine Arts Festival in Dowagiac. He then read his poem "The Urine Specimen."

In it, Kooser describes the odd feeling of holding that cup, "like holding an organ -- spleen or fatty pancreas." As the poem unravels, it offers an effortless humor even as it ruminates on mortality.

It ends with an effective punch line: You raise the cup to toast the man in the mirror. That man "wanly smiles," but does not drink to you.

The crowd, particularly awake after he read the title, erupted in laughter at the poem's end.

Capture. Pressure. Release.

Kooser's precise, clear work has been described, on occasion, as haiku-like. Indeed, his verse has this quality, and the poems translate well on stage. They are poignant, but digestible.

Also adding to the charm of the evening was Kooser's straightforward, gentlemanly nature. In fact, he started with a poem that undermined his celebrity.

It was called "Success."

Becoming Poet Laureate, he explained was an unsettling, terrifying experience. (He received no warning -- just a phone call, after which he staggered around a lot and knocked the side-view mirror off his car while backing out of the driveway.) With all his speaking engagements, friends were always inquiring how Kooser (an introvert) was doing. Hence, "Success."

In it, he speaks of "the thick, yellow fat of applause" building up in his arteries, and the onset of "poetic aphasia."

It was a humorous way to start the evening and indicative of Kooser's character.

He went on to tell the audience that he has long woken at 4:30 a.m to write, and his work, in a way, seems to reflect that. In his poems, his diligence to observing the world is clear.

Sometimes, his works were snapshots capturing small moments of wonder -- a skater executing a turn, his wife washing her hands ("The more ordinary an experience, the more I love it," he said). Other times, they were poignant portraits of family members. Occasionally, they touched on greater social issues, as with his piece on county poor farms, a striking poem that left the audience with the haunting image of bodies buried by the government, each with a mason jar, the person's name written on a slip of paper inside.

Kooser's poems always seemed to hit their mark. They often earned murmurs of recognition or spontaneous clapping at their "release" moment. The evening, packed with his short, elegant, sparse verse, seemed to go quickly. Kooser left the stage to warm and genuine applause.