Little Boxes

Background music: "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds. (She can sing it in your head, or Pete Seeger, or any of several who covered this song!). It's a Blue Monday in the blog, and raining again after lovely sunshine yesterday, so here's Toward the Blue Peninsula, a peaceful if eerie box by Joseph Cornell. I'll be reading a couple collage poems based on Cornell boxes at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago on Sunday, August 3, 1:30-3:30, with several other poets I am eager to hear! More info here. The theme of the reading is boxes, containers, being boxed in, thinking outside the box, etc. Many takes, and they're not made out of ticky tacky, and they don't look just the same! I'm honored to be part of this reading. Many thanks to WMG and to Nina Corwin, reading curator.

I'll also read some poems in the voice of Camille Claudel, who was "boxed in" at an asylum for the last 30 years of her life, from my book Interior Sculpture, the one connected to Claudel, the dance production by Columbus Dance Theatre.

In the meantime, my brain feels a little scrunched into calendar boxes, as I attend rehearsals in preparation for the Mike Dobbins Memorial New Plays from the Heartland, a presentation of staged readings of 3 winning one-act plays at Heartland Theatre Company. I'm the dramaturg for this, as I was for Earth and Sky last fall, and I am so enjoying working again with director Don LaCasse. I learn so much from his gentle, focused style. The plays, though quite different, work beautifully together and are different takes on the theme of Escape!

If you are local, I hope you'll come see the plays and listen to the guest playwright, Scott Klavan, who will give a public talk--free!--on Thursday night, July 17, at 7:30 in the theatre. He'll answer all our questions on the state of new writing in the theatre today! Klavan is a wonderful actor, a playwright, and a director of new works. He's also a theatre reviewer for Escape Into Life, and has a new review up today, of Atomic, a musical based on the making of the atomic bomb! (That sort of makes my head explode.) (With song!) (I can see clearly now, the rain has gone.)