For the curious, the move was just down the road, but I ran out of funds to furnish the place until about 2 weeks ago. Two months of sleeping on an air mattress while working, training and performing will pretty much wreck your season.

Anyway, the place is furnished now and my back thanks me profusely. Things are sort of getting back in the saddle now – rather than hanging on to a stirrup and praying the ground is level. As I was thinking of updating this thingy I came across a poem that kind of speaks to me right now. Hope you enjoy:

The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure;
the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair;
the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring:
these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings.
If we refuse to hold them
in hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain,
we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.

– Parker Palmer, from A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life
<img src="http://jonathanlowery.com/files/2010/11/shadow-3.jpg" alt="Shadow" width="300/" /

via imonk

A few updates…

Google Attack!

In a strange set of circumstances, I have apparently become he web’s leading authority on Jerzi Grotowski, according to Google anyway. Seriously. Type ‘Jerzi Grotowski’ into Google and see if my article on him isn’t first on the list or close to it. Unfortunately, if you Americanize his name to ‘Jerzy Grotowski’ it doesn’t work, so don’t do that!

In response to the attention I have re-written my Grotowski article. Most of the changes are actually corrections to the horrendous 11th hour grammar of the original. It is much easier to comprehend now. Points are followed through, thoughts do not flow over tall cliffs and sentences now finish in the appropriate places. Yay editing!

PUSH

PUSH was featured in a news article in our local paper, the Democrat and Chronicle. It has a short interview with my director, Darren Stevenson, and some video of some new choreography we’re working on. The link to the interview is here. Or if you just want the eye candy…

Yes, I did just call Darren ‘eye candy’. But it’s only skin deep… You should try working for him. It’s like working out and working – at the same time!

Upcoming

Be on the lookout for a few articles coming up sometime soon. I’m working on an update to Darren’s “A Case for Physical Theatre” that will attempt to show specific examples of things PUSH does as a result of those ideas as well as the changes nine years have made to the company.

I’m also working on a couple research articles for our upcoming work on ‘Dracula’ that I’ll try to toss up here whenever they’re done.

‘Dracula’

Oh yeah, ‘Dracula’ itself has been postponed until Halloween. We’ll be doing a shorter run at Geva in June as a stop-gap and then coming back for a longer run over the ghouly holidays to present the Count in all his glory. Should be a lot of fun.

Well, that’s all for now!

There will be no claims to poetic genius, but I think using poetry here every now and again might be fun. I figure this is probably a good way to get a sense for how I view life. Hope you enjoy. Oh, and feel free to comment.

On to the first one:

Angels of the Garden

Summer flowers alight in the wind
Dancing amid the gusty tides

Fluttering, not tethered now
Petals flown without a string

Heaven carried now to earth,
On winds no leaf considers

Seraphim to the dandelions
Revelations to roses in the thorns

Message given, pure flowers bound
On Mercury’s sandals to rejoin the dance

Two petals meet, doubling
Their joy in intricate blur

Drinking deep the currents of the sky
No earthly nectar may hold them long

White butterflies on bright wings
Angels of the garden, amidst the weeds