Boston Herald: Making It Big (Top)

I may be a globe-trotting international poet but one of the things I am most proud of is teaching mime and commedia dell'arte classes to the kids who come each summer to Open Air Circus in Somerville where I live. Jed Gottlieb writes in The Boston Herald:

...Ian Thal has spent seven years teaching students commedia dell’arte, an improvised masked slapstick that originated in Italy during the Renaissance.

“If I do my job well, the kids learn that creativity is a shared enterprise, that wit can be as much in the body as in words,” Thal said. “When they get to that age where they start studying Shakespeare in school, they recognize that the Bard’s roots are as much in broad, over-the-top comedy as in poetry.”

There's still time to register! Classes begin tonight!

Tingujt e erës/Sounds of Wind

I recently travelled to Prizren in the Republic of Kosova as a guest of the Writers Union of Kosova (Lidhja e Shkrimtarëve e Kosovës) at their Drini Poetik international poetry festival to celebrate the publication of
Tingujt e erës:Lirikë e re Amerikane or Sounds of Wind: New American Lyrics, a bilingual anthology of contemporary American poetry collected and translated into Albanian by Lediana Stillo an Albanian poet and playwright who lives in the United States, edited by Abdyl Kadolli, with cover art by Shpend Bengu, and layout by Tafil Duraku.

Featured poets include Craig Arnold, Dave Brinks, Megan Burns, Maggie Cleveland, Timothy Donnelly, Stuart Greenhouse, Anatoly Molotkov, Chad Parenteau, John Sibley Williams and myself.

I travelled to Prizren with Dave Brinks and Lediana Stillo, enjoyed the festival and spent the week learning about Kosova. I hope to be sharing with you stories of my adventures abroad in the near future.

My understanding is that the collection will be used as a textbook in teaching the translation of literary English into Albanian.

Leaving For Prizren

I am soon to depart for Kosovo to attend the Drini Poetik International Festival of Poetry in Prizren, Kosovo on June 9th & 10th as a guest of the Lidhja e Shrimtarëve e Kosovës (Writers Union* of Kosova.)

The occasion of my attendance will be the publication of Tingujt e ëres: Lirikë e re amerikane (Sound of Winds: New American Lyrics) an anthology of American poetry collected and translated into Albanian by Lediana Stillo and published by the LShK. Several of my poems were included as were poems by New Orleans poet, Dave Brinks, who will also be attending.

France will be represented by Yvan Tetelbom.

I'm very excited.

* Depending on the circumstances, the Albanian word "lidhja" is translated into English as "League," "Association," or "Union." The program names the LShK as a "Union" though some of my earlier correspondence used the term "League" in English.

Sunday, June 3rd: Teatro Delle Maschere in Somerville

Just in case you have to miss Teatro delle Maschere's performance at the Cambridge River Festival on Saturday, there is still a another chance to see us this weekend as we will be performing at the SomerStreets Carnaval in East Somerville on Louie's Stage by Foss Park at 3:15pm (Map)

As mentioned previously: we will be performing with new masks designed and sculpted by Eric Bornstein of Behind the Mask Studio & Theatre!

The Troupe's New Masks: Behind the Mask Studio

One of the benefits of Teatro delle Maschere's relationship with Behind the Mask Studio & Theatre is that master mask maker Eric Bornstein is crafting the troupe's new masks. After using a set of masks I had developed for teaching classes and workshops in performance, we will be premiering Eric's masks at our June 2nd performance at the Cambridge River Festival.

What follows is a preview of the masks as they are in the process of being crafted:


Arlecchino sculpted in clay over a plaster cast of my face.


Columbina sculpted in clay over a plaster cast of Stacey Polishook's face.


Il Dottore sculpted in clay over a plaster cast of James Van Looy's face.


Here is the trio after all three have been sculpted.


This is a cast taken off of a clay mold. It will form the basis of a final mask. In this case, the mask is for Perriot; who, though not traditionally a masked character, is in our case. As with the Dottore, he has been sculpted over a face cast of James Van Looy.

Arts Fuse Review: Beau Jest's "Ten Blocks on the Camino Real" By Tennessee Williams

My review of Beau Jest Moving Theatre's production of Tennessee Williams long neglected one-act, Ten Blocks on the Camino Real is online on The Arts Fuse. While I caught it at Charlestown Working Theater where it recently closed, it is opening tonight at Lucid Stage in Portland, Maine.

Ten Blocks on the Camino Real is a largely neglected play in Tennessee Williams’s canon, generally regarded as a one-act first draft of the 1953 full-length Sixteen Blocks on the Camino Real and not as a separate play in its own right. First composed in 1946 while traveling through Mexico and workshopped by Elia Kazan at the Actors’ Studio, the expanded and reworked play made its Broadway premiere in 1953. Sixteen Blocks closed after 60 performances and was seen as a financial and artistic failure. Some argue that the play’s experimental approach, which presaged Williams’s later work, alienated audiences whose expectations had been formed by The Glass Menagerie or A Streetcar Named Desire; Elia Kazan would later say that his naturalistic directorial approach was incompatible with the play as written.

Here is Beau Jest artistic director Davis Robinson speaking about the play:


I should also note that Beau Jest posted a very informative dramaturgical blog on the play entitled "30 Days to TEN BLOCKS".

June 2nd: Teatro delle Maschere at Cambridge River Festival

My commedia dell'arte troupe, Teatro delle Maschere, will be performing at the Cambridge River Festival on Saturday, June 2nd. We will be performing two shows at 3pm and 4:45pm on the INSPIRE Theater Stage on Memorial Drive between JFK and Plympton Streets.

Our sets will include both "The Esteemed Dottore of Bologna Offers His Authoritative, Erudite, and Thoroughly Supercilious Meditation on the Mask" which we previously performed as part of Fort Point Theatre Channel's Excalamation Point! Series and at the Puppet Slam and a commedia dell'arte staging of act III, scene 3 of William Shakespeare's As You Like It which we last performed at last year's Shakespeare Slam.

The cast will include Stacey Polishook, James Van Looy and myself and will feature new masks designed by Eric Bornstein of Behind the Mask Studio & Theatre.

This free event is sponsored by the Cambridge Arts Council. The INSPIRE stage is curated by the Central Square Theater.

Facebook users may RSVP here if they like.