Earthquake

I have some more Shanghai entries to transcribe and post for you, and the early Xi’an one, but I’m interrupting the chronological flow of trip reporting to tell you about the earthquake.

The epicenter was near Chengdu, about 1,000 miles south-southwest of Xi’an, where I am. It’ll give you some sense of the scale of the thing when I tell you we did feel it, and in a pretty big way. I was walking on top of the old city wall. It’s 500 years old, 30 feet wide and 30 feet high, made of rammed earth and clad with multiple wythes of brick. So it’s SOLID. On the city side is a low parapet, maybe 2 feet high, and on the outer side, where the invaders would have come from, are arrow slits to shoot at them from. I’d just passed a sign describing a new gate, built in the wall after the Revolution, the better to connect the city to the train station. I was peering through an arrow slit, holding onto the two walls beside it, when I felt a slight shaking. Just like people, I thought, to mess with an ancient wall in a way that now makes it shake whenever a train goes by. Then the shaking got stronger, and then it was a swaying, back and forth, and I could see the trees also swaying and bells ringing. A crane swayed also, and though I was alone on that section of the wall, far in the distance I saw people running, clearly panicked. The swaying lasted about a minute — a long time in an earthquake, I’m told. After it had pretty much stopped I went to the other side of the wall and looked down into a residential neighborhood. Everyone was out in the street, talking, shouting; when they saw me peering over the wall they yelled at me to come down. But I figured, there was nothing around to fall on me if another shock came; and if this wall was going to fall — a very unlikely event — wouldn’t I be better off on it than under it? So I stayed, and nothing else happened. It wasn’t until I got back to the hotel that I found out how big and far away it was, and not until this morning — now; it’s 8am here — that we knew how devasting it had been in Chengdu. We felt an aftershock here at about 3am, too, another indication of how huge an event it was. For all entries on her blog:

Here’s an overview of Edith Isaac-Rose and Bea Kreloff, founders of Art Workshop International, that was in Passport Magazine. This is our 28th year in Italy, and the summer arts community they started continues to inspire creativity in artists, writers, playwrights, and also those who love to cook and learn Italian.

globetrotting

THE MUSES OF ASSISI

While touring Assisi, it was in the lobby of Hotel Giotto that I met Edith Isaac-Rose and Bea Kreloff who for 24 years have offered art and writing classes in Italy. Initially they headquartered their workshop studio at an Assisi convent, but when the Mother Su- perior caught Bea slipping guests in after curfew, they took up quarters at the more convivial Hotel Giotto. The centrally located four-star hotel has given over a spacious conference room and terrace for use as a studio. Included in the writing workshop fee is a shared double room with bath, breakfast, dinner, lectures, and gratuities.

“We wanted an Italian town with a lot of history, culture, and art, yet not too distracting for the students; meaning not Florence. We wanted a town where participants could walk around and become familiar with it during their stay,” explains 80-year-old Bea. “The Art Workshop International has been a welcome presence in Assisi and a part of the fabric of town, and we are proud of the relaxed, enriching environment we’ve created.”

Edith and Bea met in 1979, and have been life and business partners ever since. A child of socialist parents, Bea was raised in a hotbed of radical politics in Brooklyn, carrying that activism into her adult life: civil rights, anti-war, gay rights, and feminism. The former head of the Art Department at Fieldston School, when not administering Art Workshop, she keeps up her work as a feminist and human rights activist.

Edith, a graduate of the Chicago Art Institute who has taught at Ohio State, Columbia, the New School, and Rockland Community College, has exhibited in the United States and abroad and her work is part of the Hirshhorn Museum and other important collections.

The success of the visual arts classes encouraged them to form writing workshops as well. With much naiveté and chutzpah, they asked such literary luminaries as Grace Paley, Tony Kushner, Frank McCourt, Dorothy Alison, Vivian Gornick, Michael Cunningham, and Maxine Hong Kingston to lead workshops; to their delight all of them accepted. Credit for the writing classes, as well as the visual arts courses, is available to matriculating undergraduate students at the New School in New York

This year they added an Italian language class, and a culinary class with Valerio Mogliani, Hotel Giotto’s maestro chef. Included in the cooking workshop are trips to Norcia (home of the Black Truffle), winery tours, an ingredient-shopping excursion to Bastia, and a visit to the famous Perugina chocolate factory. www.artworkshopintl.com

—Bill Strubbe

Here’s a pdf file of the article (and picture of Bea and Edith): “Muses of Assisi” article about Art Workshop International in “Passport Magazine.”

INSIGHT FOR PLAYWRIGHTS
The Playwright’s Advocate…
by SANDRA HOSKING
This article copyright 2008 by Sandra Hosking. Used by permission.
Dramaturg: Jayne Wenger
Place of Residence: Tiburon, Calif.
Hometown: Grand Haven, Mich.
Education: Majored in English and theater at Eastern Michigan University and studied with Herbert Berghof Studios and Neighborhood Playhouse, in New York
Selected Awards: Cable Car Award for best direction, multiple Dramalogue Awards in San Francisco and Los Angeles for best ensemble cast and direction

What is dramaturgy? The art of theater, especially the writing of plays. Or, as Merriam-Webster says, “The art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation.”
A dramaturg is defined as a person who works alongside writers to develop their plays for performance or a literary manager or dramatic adviser of a theater company.

San Francisco-area dramaturg and director Jayne Wenger sees her role as simply the playwright’s advocate.
“I have had a long and enduring love affair with playwrights. I have embraced a life that has at its core the art of theater,” Wenger says.

Wenger, who has been involved in performing and theater since grade school, has practiced dramaturgy since the early 1980s.
“I found myself working on new plays as an actor and understood that I was more interested in the evolution of the text and the process of writing and developing the play, getting it to the stage, in front of an audience for the first time, than I was in memorizing the lines and treading the boards,” she says.

When she first moved to New York in the early 1970s, she served as an intern at the Roundabout Theater where she helped build their former 23rd Street theater, build sets, run lights, and assist with props and costumes. Later, she landed a summer internship at Cherry County Playhouse, in Traverse City, Mich.

Says Wenger, “During one show there I was the dresser for June Lockhart (Lassie’s mom) and I learned from her that if you put scented oil on the lights in your dressing room it would smell great. That was an invaluable lesson that I have carried with me throughout my career!”

One of her teachers at the HB studios in New York was “the very thorny and intense” Edward Morehouse.
“He taught a text analysis course that was eye opening for me. He taught me how to really read, break down and interpret a play. That was the beginning of my understanding of the script, and text as raw material for theatrical performance,” Wenger says.

In New York, Wenger became a member of the Women’s Ensemble and served as their artistic director for eight years. With them, she developed and directed hundreds of new plays.

“Working with these women playwrights, and actors was the core of my training,” she says. “I was called upon to select plays for readings and performance, audition and cast plays, and recognize talent. Perhaps most importantly, I learned to be a diplomat. I was reading plays all the time, and I still do. I was drawn to the playwrights who looked for new ways and new styles to express themselves, while being influenced by the world around them. I began to develop a personal aesthetic and an understanding of why certain plays appealed to me.”

She moved to the San Francisco area in 1991.

As artistic director of the Playwrights Foundation, in San Francisco, she read over 300 scripts each year and developed a professional reading-selection committee. She created workshops and teaching programs and initiated the Young Playwrights Fellowship program between the Foundation and the Kennedy Center American College Theater.

“I think the best thing a good dramaturg can offer to a playwright is her ear,” Wenger says. “Having the playwright read their writing out loud can be the best short cut to big and small revelations about the play and what it may be lacking. I have worked on developing my listening skills and really hearing the playwright’s voice can tell me a lot of things about the tone of the play that I may not have understood.”

Wenger sometimes also serves as an editor. She poses questions, such as: What is happening in this scene?, Why now?, Why here?, and What motivated you to write this play?

During a production, a dramaturg might keep track of versions of the play, find songs, pictures, or stories to illuminate the text, help with casting, conduct research, or help with post-play discussions, says Wenger, who is a member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas association.

“Most importantly, I am the playwright’s advocate,” she says.

This summer, Wenger will serve as a panelist at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, in Valdez, Alaska. She also will be teaching a workshop in Assisi, Italy through Art Workshop International. There, she will work with a small group of playwrights to help them develop their work. The intensive will be geared toward both new and established writers. Participants will workshop their work, which will be showcased at the end of the term.

Since artists from other disciplines will also be present in Assisi, attendees will receive individual attention but also will interact with their “community.”

“Everyone eats together, it’s al fresco, the food is good,” Wenger says. “Assisi is a busy town but interesting.”
For information, visit www.artworkshopintl.com.

As a dramaturg and director, she has been working with Ann Brebner and Laurel Graver who wrote an adaptation of the novel Hard Laughter by Anne Lamott. That is slated to open at the AlterTheatre of San Rafael, in California, on April 25. Read more this entry »

Art Workshop International welcomes back Diana Woodcock, who received a 2005 faculty grant to study in Assisi, as an artist-in-residence. She has the same position this summer for the Everglades national park.

In 2006 she won an international publication prize in Atlanta Review’s poetry competition, was designated an honorable mention in the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda prize in poetry competition, and was the recipient of a residency at Vermont Studio Center. Woodcock also received a summer literary seminars/Kenya fellowship. In December 2005, her poetry was exhibited with Li Chevalier’s paintings at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Doha, Qatar. In 2004, she was a finalist for the Violet Reed Haas award for a full-length poetry collection (Snake Nation Press).

Since receiving an M.F.A. degree in creative writing in 2004, Diana Woodcock has been teaching writing and poetry courses at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar. Previously, she spent seven and a half years in Asia teaching English in Tibet and Macao and working with refugees on the Thai-Cambodian border.

Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, Atlanta Review, Wisconsin Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Whiskey Island Magazine, Brooklyn Review, Blue Fifth Review, Quercus Review, Hobble Creek Review, The World and I, The Homestead Review, White Heron, Small Brushes, Creative Juices, Pudding and other journals, as well as in anthologies such as Susan B & Me, Native West’s Least-loved Beasts of the Really Wild West and Pig Iron Press’s Frontier: Custom and Archetype.