Based on a 5,000-year-old Sumerian myth from the land that is now Iraq, this live theatrical animation features 17 large puppets, 8 actors, music, video and the dazzling richness, broad humor and erotic imagery of the ancient texts. “The Goddess of Heaven and Earth descends to visit her sister, Queen of the Underworld, while a…
Good news from Victoria Bentley as she completes this phase of her volunteer work in the Congo and returns home to Santa Barbara, California. She’ll return to the Congo in July. Click here for updates on a sewing room with 10 machines set up at the women’s center…that will make a big difference. African Fabric…
If you want to support the work of peace and reconciliation and conflict resolution…if you’d like to make a difference in Africa…here is an important website to explore the African Great Lakes Initiative. There, look for the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) which “encourages participants to recognize that they can best find their own answers…
Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt by Jane Hirschfield from After The dog, dead for years, keeps coming back in the dream. We look at each other there with the old joy. It was always her gift to bring me into the present— Which sleeps, changes, awakens, dresses, leaves. Happiness and unhappiness differ as a bucket hammered…
Isabella Mori’s blog “change therapy: making lives better, making better lives” is sponsoring a Buddhist carnival. What’s that? It’s a selection of buddhist posts all over the blogosphere. Isabella kindly included Riehlife’s features on Eden Maxwell.
One of my greatest pleasures in being an author and having my book “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” out in the world is hearing from readers. This note and two beautiful photos of one of my homeplaces, Lake County, Northern California, arrived from John Frary recently. I was so touched that I wanted to share it.—JGR…
The Kindness of the Blind by Wislawa Szymborska (Nobel Prize in Literature 1996) Translated from the Polish by J. Kostkowska A poet is reading to the blind. He did not suspect it was so hard. His voice is breaking. His hands are shaking. He feels that here each sentence is put to the test of…
THE STATS Ten plays selected for reading out of forty submitted. Four plays read chosen for full production. Mandel’s “Audition Piece” made both cuts! Gerry Mandel, playwright THE GENESIS OF “AUDITION PIECE” I started writing this play about a year ago. It began as a result of a comment made by a friend named Harry….
Gerry Mandel’s “Audition Piece” won First Run Theatre’s 2008 6th Annual Reading Festival (four plays out of nine chosen for production). Now “Audition Piece,” directed by Marc Macormic, will grace the First Run Theatre stage April 18-20, and 25-27 (Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday matinees) at the 233 N. New Ballas Road, DeSmet High…
What are actors thinking in a scene and how do they prepare? More often than we know, the answer is poetry. That’s what we learn in Jason Shinder’s newest newest anthology and its accompanying CD: “The Poem I Turn to: Actors & Directors Present Poetry that Inspires Them” (Sourcebooks Media Fusion, 2008) with a preface…