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~ arts journal~ Lewis J Whittington

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Daily Archives: August 31, 2009

Saints’ rainbow

31 Monday Aug 2009

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 3am in the farthest corner, anxiety fogs the eyes above a skyline of city lights, signs, & satellites            
                                          Assotto Saint, Wishing for Wings
Going down 2nd Ave

With tribe of gay boys

in heat

All living their childhoods

Again for the first time

Even when they know that the light

around them shifted

To a marred joy,

that must be witnessed,

but not outlived before

Night falls on Renaldo

and gods were

 with Assotto  sainto

 Ascending Renaldo 

Gay warriors

Liberators

Libertines

To exorcise

Sexual auteurs

Sainto who prowled

To write

Arenas gives

The perfect moment

luminous negative light

Unearthing scarred ritual

Kneeling with him

in ravaged

Silhouette and gazed

Assotto

Was with him when

His lover died

When he was dying himself

Sainto

Haitian Émigrés Yves

Cuban refugee Renaldo

Unenslaved

unsainted

bound to himself

Prisms that no one

else stopped to see

And bled the crusaders

Brutally they he clung to

The red roses and

ran ashore screaming

‘ocean is God

And I am alive

Simply, violently,

You must breathe with me.”

He screamed for his Mother

All sainto

Spiritus Sanctus

Begotten son and

So blessed upon

deposed gay landscape

So craved within

So cast out to sea.

 

stage

31 Monday Aug 2009

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She does recall

Melissa Dunphy has captivated Philadelphia theater audiences portraying Shakespearean ingénues, but acting is actually just her sideline, she is primarily a contemporary classical composer.  She will be conducting her first chamber opera ’The Gonzales Cantata’ (as in former attorney-general Alberto Gonzales, late of the Bush administration) at the Fringe Festival this week.

The Gonzales hearings, which attempted to probe what was behind the firings of nine federal judges stands as one of the most troubling scandals of the Bush years. It may seem like an unlikely scenario for a choral work, but Dunphy, who passionate about politics found it musical, particularly Gonzales’s repeated refrain ‘I don‘t recall.”

“Listening to the hearings, I thought, this is an opera.” she said, in an interview at her home in North Philly last week.  Dunphy was also intrigued by the theatricality of the grilling of Gonzales by both democrats and republicans. Dunphy was born in Australia and has been here for six years and became a US citizen just in time to vote for Barack Obama. In fact, she completed her opera the day he took office, she said.

Although she calls her musical template for the Cantata as “neo-baroque…with several references which parody form,“ her musical range is infiltrated with lush classicism. She felt that the hearings were orchestrated and the judicial rituals of the hearings interlocked with the formalism of baroque modals. From there, she mixes things up.

All of the male leads- Gonzales, Orrin Hatch, Patrick Leahey, Arlen Specter- are sung by women. It shocked Dunphy that only one woman, Senator Diane Fienstein, was part of the Gonzales hearings, so this is an artistic protest to that. She also feels that theater is dominated by male parts and male creative voices.

As polemic Dunphy is about current politics, she does not espouse any political bent in the opera. In going over the transcripts, she was amazed that Gonzales was basically called a liar by Republicans and that Gonzales was hung out to dry, vindicated and vilified, even if he was less than forthcoming.

Speaking of political theater, Dunphy just finished playing Lady Macbeth and will be reprising the role at The Philadelphia Shakespeare Company in their current season.   She ignores the centuries old tradition referring to ‘the Scottish play.’   “I writing music for Macbeth.” she says straight out,   “Actors get mad at me for saying Macbeth. Well, I was Lady Macbeth.” 

She said that she ignore superstitions at her own peril.  Last spring she was Ophelia to Goeff Sobelle’s Hamlet and “At a rehearsal during Hamlet at the Lantern. Geoff  tripped and sprained his ankle and everybody looked at me.” she said with a laugh.

metroscape

31 Monday Aug 2009

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Sat. humidity was beasty in the city and by afternoon, even thinking cool thoughts and reading in front of the AC didn’t seem to soothe. Doors were jammed, the ice beast was screaming and thoughts were sagebrush. Suddenly teeming rain lashed Rittenhouse and even Pine St. with its dependable drainage was flooded within minutes. There was zero visibility and motorists scrambled to pull over. I dashed out in it immediately natch.  Nothing like getting soaked in the middle of the street in bare feet. The humidity was lanced like a boil and the front was so rapid that it was sunny and still raining with I spotted only the 2nd rainbow I ever remember seeing directly over the city in the 30 year I’ve lived here.

bloglog

31 Monday Aug 2009

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Dragged kicking and screaming into my 56th year, which I was horrified to discover was plastered all over Facebook.  It has taken me years to obscure my date, so I could ignore my birthday.   I shouldn’t be such a bitter old queen though, since I received so many birthday notes and salutations, which I don’t deserve for being such a bad sport.  Fortunately tomorrow it will be forgotten and by next year I will have shut down any participation on social networking, that is if the motherboard has not taken over our minds by then.

All poems by Lewis Whittington unless otherwise noted

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  • review: A Sumptuously Rustic ’Into The Woods’ at the Arden Theater | EDGE Media Network edgemedianetwork.com/story.php?3168… latest theater reviewtravlin' light 6 days ago

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