The Bride of Acacias & Two Iranian Children in London

I will have two plays in London: The Bride of Acacias & Two Iranian Children

Saturday, October 1, 2011
Time: 7: 00 PM to 9: 30 PM
Location: Omid Cultural Society
45 Queens Walk London, W5 1TL,
United Kingdom

The Bride of Acacias: A one woman show, based on life of the prominent Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, whose poetry made a significant impact on men and women in Iran.

Two Iranian Children: A play about two Iranian twin sisters reuniting after twenty two years of separation where their life turned into completely opposite directions.

Poster by Kaveh Adel

100 Thousand Poets for Change in Chicago

Today we will have a reading at Red Rover Series.

Bad Date America

A special event with 100 Thousand Poets for Change

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24th
7-9pm

Featuring:
Kaveh Adel
Barbara Barg
Jen Besemer
Dan Godston
Laura Goldstein
Ezzat Goushegir
Philip Jenks
Jennifer Karmin
Francesco Levato
Toni Asante Lightfoot
Monica Long
Anthony Madrid
Mario
Ario Mashayekhi
Charlie Newman
Ladan Osman
Roger Reeves
Timothy David Rey
Kenyatta Rogers
Jacob Saenz
Larry Sawyer
Don Share
Keli Stewart
Tony Trigilio
Lina Ramona Vitkauskas

at Outer Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave
suggested donation $4

logistics --
near CTA Damen blue line
third floor walk up
not wheelchair accessible

BAD DATE AMERICA is the Chicago event of 100 Thousand Poets for Change. In the spirit of community-building, guest curators Larry Sawyer and Lina Ramona Vitkauskas are asking local poets to go on a hypothetical “date” with America. Has your relationship with America started to seem like a bad date? See -- http://baddateamerica.wordpress.com

100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE is a global initiative of poetry readings, political demonstrations, community picnics, awareness events, and parades that will take place in 450 cities across the planet on September 24, 2011 to promote serious social, environmental, and political change. See -- http://www.100tpc.org

MESS HALL is a Chicago-based experimental cultural center and collaborated with Red Rover Series on Bad Date America. Mess Hall is a place where visual art, radical politics, creative urban planning, applied ecological design and other things intersect and inform each other. They host exhibitions, discussions, film screenings, brunchlucks (brunch + potluck), workshops, concerts, campaigns, meetings (both closed and open) and more. See -- http://messhall.org

RED ROVER SERIES is curated by Laura Goldstein and Jennifer Karmin. Each event is designed as a reading experiment with participation by local, national, and international writers, artists, and performers. The series was founded in 2005 by Amina Cain and Jennifer Karmin.

To Posterity

To Posterity


1.

Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?
Bertolt Brecht

Dark Times....Dark Times...

Georgia executed Troy Davis!
"The state of Georgia executed convicted murderer Troy Davis on Wednesday in a case that drew international attention because of claims by his advocates that he may have been innocent.
"Strapped to a gurney in Georgia's death chamber, Troy Davis lifted his head and declared one last time that he did not kill police officer Mark MacPhail. Just a few feet away behind a glass window, MacPhail's son and brother watched in silence."

Davis, convicted of the 1989 killing of a police officer, was put to death by lethal injection at 11.08 local time Thursday at a prison in central Georgia after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a final appeal, a prison official said...."

People want change

For months the protesters had planned to descend on Wall Street on a Saturday and occupy parts of it as an expression of anger over a financial system that they say favors the rich and powerful at the expense of ordinary citizens.

Serenity

Mina Hsing's painting has a serene, colorful beauty of Chinese culture and American style.

I Shall Not Live In Vain

I Shall Not Live In Vain
Emily Dickinson

If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain
Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.

100 Thousand poets for change

100 Thousand Poets for Change is one of the largest poetry events in the world history.
Founder of this event is Michael Rothenberg who is a widely known poet, editor of the online literary magazine Bigbridge.org and an environmental activist based in Northern California.
Read more...

More to come....

Two Plays in London

Two of my plays Bride of Acacias and Two Iranian Children will have staged readings in London, in October 1st at Omid Cultural Society.
Poster made by artist Kaveh Adel.

Two Iranian Children

"Use your imagination! Imagine on these two empty chairs, on my right and left, are sitting two twin sisters, age 27!"

Yesterday, I had a strange experience! I had to read a scene from my play "Two Iranian Children" at Evanston Public Library as a part of a larger event. For the first time, I had to perform a scene with three completely different characters, a mother with her two daughters, short dialogues, short amount of time, all by myself...I was emotionally exhausted at the end! But....I always learn ....

.......
Mina: What?
Melody: I’m the product of heresy and apostasy!
Mother: Melody?(Laughs) What are you talking about?
Mina: Is it a funny joke?
Mother: What a sophisticated product of heresy you are!
Melody: I’m not joking!
Mother: You've always had a very special sense of humor!
Melody: I believe you and dad by turning your back on god by embracing Marxist ideology not only brought...................................................

Two Women

Two Women is a 1960 Italian film which tells the story of a woman trying to protect her teenaged daughter from the horror of war. The film stars Sophia Loren, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Eleonora Brown Carlo Ninchi, and was directed by Vittorio De Sica.
Watch the whole movie here.

Gavin Bantock, the Prominent Poet

Reading my diary, I was provoked once again by remembering "Ichor" a provocative poem by Gavin Bantock!
Is Bantock a forgotten poet?

Gavin Bantock has written four extensive poems, of which two, `Ichor' and `Hiroshima', appeared in magazines and one, `Juggernaut', as a pamphlet (Anvil Press Poetry, 1968). In these his poetic discipline has tautened, though as Kevin Crossley-Holland wrote he `is not afraid to think big, to stick out his neck, and to write of man's fragile vanity'.

This book contains what we consider to be the finest of these poems, `Person', a sustained and moving exploration of the nature of human identity and suffering; together with eleven short poems displaying a sure technique which is sensitive to a range of ideas and experience.

Gavin Bantock was born in 1939. He was educated at King's Norton GS, Birmingham and New College, Oxford where he wrote his long poem `Christ' (Donald Parsons, Oxford, 1965) which shared the Richard Hillary Award for 1964 and the Poetry Society's Alice Hunt-Bartlett Award for 1966.

Pornography and Obscenity

I recently read a translation of "Pornography and Obscenity" a remarkable essay by D. H. Lawrence which I found enormously beneficial for all kind of Puritanical societies with democratic masks. Lawrence unmasks the untruth and defines the truth about sex, pornography and Obscenity.
Lawrence notes: "Nobody quite knows what the word “obscene” itself means, or what it is intended to mean: but gradually all the old words that belong to the body below navel, have come to be judge obscene."
Lawrence did not support pornography, which he defined. “But even I would censor genuine pornography, rigorously . . . you can recognize it by the insult it offers, invariably, to sex, and to the human spirit.” The common man degrades sex, according to Lawrence, and has “as great a hate and contempt of sex as the greyest Puritan . . . they have the grey disease of sex-hatred, coupled with the yellow disease of dirt-lust.”

The Sower

I discovered The Sower by Albin Polasek three weeks ago in a rainy day in Chicago Botanic Garden. It revived the memory of my fascination with masterpieces as well as Michelangelo's marble statue of David at the dome of Florence's Accademia Gallery, Italy.

Read a perspective on this statue.


Here I am! A live statue hand in hand with the sower, spreading seeds for humanity...