Keith Johnstone’s Impro is a terrific book for actors looking for methods to feel at home and never without words on the stage. Johnstone’s emphasis is to understand and utilize improvisation effectively. The book is full of wonderful exercises and activities that do indeed have the ability to unlock spontaneous, creative speech to instigate, develop, and […]
Research Notes: Trance States in Mask Work II Read More »
Rediscovering earlier notes for my article The Swan Maiden's Feathered Robe — I always like to circle back to these notes because they continue to offer insights. These were notes made from BF LEavy, In Search of the Swan Maiden: A Narrative on Folklore and Gender. I have long been fascinated by the "Animal Bride" stories
A Few Thoughts on The Swan Maiden Narratives Read More »
I have recently come across a host of wonderful green images of spring — a rarity in this desert to be treasured. It reminds of more northern places, where rhubarb leaves unfurl through spring snow, lambs gambol in wet green fields, and the air itself is heavy with dew and rain, and earthly scents. So
Jack and Jill of the Green Read More »
I love Gillian Welch's album "The Harrow and the Harvest" — but it is this song that gives me the chills. Not sure what it is I love best — perhaps it's the way the young woman transforms a haunted past into a reclaimed realm. The night becomes beautiful and evocative, the bones in the
Left Me With a Dark Turn of Mind Read More »
I am trying to remember that moment in writing The Innamorati — constructed mainly around the characters of the Commedia dell'Arte– when I decided I needed the Siren Herminia to join the cast. I cannot now conceive of the novel without her — but neither can I recall conceiving the necessity of her in the
Homeric Sirens II: Enchanters of All Mankind Read More »
Homer offers one of the earliest descriptions of the Sirens in The Odyssey. It comes as Odysseus is leaving Hades, having gotten advice from just about all of the shades in his past. Circe makes it clear that there are still significant obstacles to his journey home and offers suggestions as to how to hear
The Sirens of Homer’s Odyssey I Read More »
This is a reposting of an earlier post on the folk tales and others from Laura Gonzenbach‘s collections and seemed a good one to follow on the heels of earlier notes. I also want to reference another post on the banished bride I wrote about earlier this year — a variant of the women below.
The Rejected Brides of Folk Tales. Read More »
I posted a few field drawings of my mother Jeanette Snyder yesterday, and wanted to add some more of them because I think they are charming — and remind me of the days when field researchers lugged heavy tape recorders, cameras, and note books, just in case all that heavy technology failed, leaving only the
More Field Drawings: Darjeeling, India 1964. Tibetan Lhamo Performances. Read More »
I have been working through my mother Jeanette Snyder's papers — including a cash of drawings, and strips of contact sheet photographs (many that were never developed and for which the negatives disappeared many years ago) on her research of the Tibetan Lhamo in 1964. She rote a wonderful article "The World Beneath the Tents"
Bittersweet: An Afternoon Under the Tent Watching the A Ice Lhamo Perform Read More »
My childhood Christmas experience was populated with these lovely vintage Swedish Christmas postcards. They are actually quite small — too small to put into a US post, which is probably why my mother never sent them out. But she saved them from her childhood and so they became a part of mine. Every Christmas they
God Jul! Our Vintage Swedish Christmas Cards Read More »
