Monday, September 23, 2013

Past Week to Weekend Round Up

Photo: Peter Tonery
Many Years Ago . . .

It's officially Fall, and by golly, it's chilly this morning in our farmhouse. Life is so different without the noise of our family. I'm missing everyone, but we are a phone call away.

Had an enormously busy week, last week.  The CAST performance of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure was well done. 190 people attended the show.  So happy to see so many from St. John Fisher's Faculty, staff, students and our surround college campuses too, Nazareth, U of R, and SUNY Brockport.  Victoria, the CAST Light designer, was so impressed with the audience's reception to the play.  Our audience was in tune with the comedy, laughing in all the right moments.   It was a huge success.

Participated in the Chain Gang Reading at Writers and Books, part of the Fringe Festival on Saturday Afternoon.  We had a full house for our performance, and I must say the reading was so powerful.  I loved how the poems linked, and the individual voices.  So grateful for the anthology produced by Foothills Publishing.  The Fringe Festival continues through this week. Special thanks to Wanda Schubmehl for organizing this poetry project.  She says she is the Chain Gang Mistress.  I say Wanda is a force.  Her poetry just knocks me out.  The poems in this project are so poignant, so artful, so humanly connected. The concept, which is Wanda's invention, is  full of surprises.  The chain gang, 23 poets, words and imagination.
I recommend buying the anthology from Foothills Publishing.

Sunday, I spent a lot of time in the garden harvesting vegetables.  Picked the remaining rows of dry beans in the company of two of our cats, Charley and Cat Benatar.  Charley curled up like a snail and slept while I picked.  Cat Benatar  was in the mix, battling at beans, getting tangled in the vines.  So now I have two mesh laundry bags full !  Can't wait for my granddaughter to come over.  She likes shucking and sorting the beans.

Picked our precious tomatoes; cherries (yellow, orange, red) I slow-roasted.  The plum, heirloom,some yellow cherries became  That' sa Good Sauce.  We may have it for dinner tonight.  My sister Karen and her daughter Lucy are going to be here.  Besides this, picked and put up (Peter did this) cauliflower and broccoli, which is just drop dead gorgeous this year.  I have a bushel of pears ready for processing, or eating with goat cheese.  Apples need to be picked in the upcoming week.  So much to do now.  The weather delays really have made this stuff challenging because I have other work to do.  It's amazing how things are getting done. 


This week: I will be reading at A Different Path Gallery in Brockport NY.


Here is Christine Green's, the curator of this reading series, invitation:

Please join A Different Path Gallery in Brockport (27 Market St.) as we present writers Christine Noble and M.J. Iuppa. They will read recent works of poetry, prose, and flash fiction on September 28, 2013 from 5-7pm.  There is no charge for this event.  Light refreshments will be served.

For further information please visit our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ADifferentPathGalleryFallWinterReadingSeries?fref=ts or call 637-5494 or 395-9833. 

Hope to see you there.



Saturday, September 21, 2013

Rainy Saturday. A Good Day to go to Fringe Festival

                                                                              Photo by Peter Tonery
 Fringe Festival :  TODAY
The Poetry Chain Gang at Writers & Books, 740 University Avenue, Rochester NY 14607.  Event is free!
Come One, Come All~

23 Rochester-area poets present work written over the past five months. Five Gang Leaders started things off with a fresh poem, and members of the chains each wrote a poem in response to the one immediately preceding. What spark got passed through the chain? Where did it all come out? (No actual chains will be harmed in the performance of this project.)
Show Length: 60 minutes Ticket Price: Free Genre: Spoken Word
Ages: 17+ Show Dates: 4:00pm, Sat., Sept 21
 This was a fabulous poetry project, conceived several years ago by Wanda Schubmehl  with great success.  This past summer,Wanda invited 23 poets to participate in a new chain gang project. An anthology has been produced, showcasing the poems (Foothills Publishing).  They will be available for sale.
Hope to see you at this Fringe event!
 
 
 
 
 

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Cambridge American Stage Tour (CAST) at St. John Fisher College 9/19/2013, at 7 p.m. One Performance Only

This week at St. John Fisher College for One Performance Only on Thursday 9/19/2013 , at 7 p.m. in Cleary Family Auditorium.
Admission: $5.00 for general public.
Free: for SJFC staff, faculty, satudents with ID.


Here's the scoop (with some repeated info):

The Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program kicks off the Fall semester with some exciting programming!

Get ready for Cambridge American Stage Tour’s  mesmerizing production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure
One Performance Only, Thursday, September 19, 2013
at 7 p.m. in Cleary Family Auditorium.

Tickets: $5.00 for General Public; Free for St. John Fisher Faculty, Staff and Students with ID. Open seating. Door opens at 6:45 p.m.

CAST's visit to our campus is sponsored by the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program.

 A bit of background on CAST:

This September, undergraduate students from the University Of Cambridge will be travelling from England to perform Shakespeare ’s most perplexing problem play.
Now in its 14th year, the Cambridge American Stage Tour (CAST) is proud to present Measure for Measure, featuring Cambridge’s finest actors, directors, designers and technicians.
Concerning Measure for Measure:

“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall...”
As the sex trade spirals out of control in Vienna, Duke Vincentio goes
undercover, leaving the brittle Angelo in charge. Angelo rules with
tyrannical spite, but after meeting the enchantingly willful Isabella he can't
adhere to his own rules. Deceit, hypocrisy and scandal spiral out of
control, and Angelo's terrible ultimatum forces Isabella to confront the
entanglement of sex and death.
A bold casting move sees Angelo doubled with the brothel's Mistress
Overdone, exposing the play’s startlingly modern themes of political
corruption and the abuse of power.
Since 2000, CAST has been delighting audiences up and down
the east coast of the USA . The tour visits high schools, colleges
and professional theatres, performing to full houses and critical acclaim,
bringing the work of Shakespeare to as wide an audience as possible, and
helping audiences interact with the play and the company through its
specially tailored performance workshops.

This CAST performance marks the tenth visit to St. John Fisher Campus. Besides the one time performance on 9/19/2013 at 7 p.m., there will be two workshops on Friday, September 20th 2013, in Dr. Uman’s Shakespeare class and Professor Barthelmes’s Acting Out Ireland class.

Don't miss this opportunity to see Shakespeare Theatre at its best!

M.J.Iuppa,  Director of the Visual and Performing Arts Minor Program
St. John Fisher College
Basil 121
585-385-8412

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Busy, Busy Weekend!

This weekend, there will be a Book Fair at Visual Studies Workshop on 31 Prince Street, Rochester, NY 14607.  During this Book Fair, which runs 12-7 p.m. today, there will be a Litsplosion  held in the Project Space in the Visual Studies Workshop.

Litsplosion will be 10 minute readings by poets and writers from the Rochester and surrounding area(Buffalo, Syracuse, too).

Hosted by Alberto Abonado, editor of The Bakery, and curator of the Deep Fried Reading Series at The Yards.

Here is the litsplosion line up:

3:00 Stephen Schottenfeld

3:10 MJ Iuppa

3:20 Tony Leuzzi

3:30 Michael Burkard

3:40 Jennifer H. Fortin

3:50 Nate Pritts


4:00 Break

4:10 Rachel Hall

4:20 Cori Winrock

4:30 John Roche

4:40 Sejal Shah

4:50 Kristen Gentry

5:00 Megan Backer

5:10 Break

5:20 Robert Glick

5:30 Alicia Hoffman

5:40 Joe Hall

5:50 Aaron Fagan

6:00 Mi Ditmar

6:10 Christopher Kennedy

6:20 Lillian Yvonne-Bertram
 Hope you will be able to come to this today, for an hour or so.  Check out the Book Fair, listen to a set or two, meet up with friends, have a cup of something . . .
***  The participants at the Litsplosion will have their books for sale too.

September, End of Summer

photo by Peter Tonery

Glorious Sunflowers