Poems -- & musings on the Albany (NY) poetry scene.
"It's not the Truth, but it's pretty darn close."
October 8, 2013
We All, September 18
Brian Dorn has been promoting this event at a series of open mics recently, reciting the title poem, even juggling colorful balls as he says the poem. Tonight I got the see the full production at The Arts Center on Broadway in Saratoga Springs, NY.
Brian has become a fixture at most open mics with his characteristically rhymed pieces; his themes include political & love poems, philosophical musings, even poems on religious & spiritual topics, that he recites in his own unique style. The hour & a half production of We All used live dancers, acrobats, & balancers performing to recordings of Brian reading his poems. The text was projected on a screen behind the performers, & sometimes included a video of prior performances. Some of dancers used lighted hula-hoops in lieu of real fire.
The performers, variously associated with Firekeeper Productions, the dance troupe Fire Magick & the band The Love Sprockets, included Jozette Gordon, Jahnavi Newsom, Megan Gendell, Seth Hill, Radha Newson, Izabella Dean, & Addison Rice. The performances were riveting, often spell-binding, while not distracting from the text. It was like a night at a poetry circus, without the elephants & tigers.
Brian's poems works well in open mics & featured readings, but in a long show such as this his readings were numbing. His poems are mostly in a regular rhyming pattern, which he delivers in a lightly modulated monotone. This works well in short doses, in fact it could be called his "signature style". But in this setting the incessant repetition of style & tone & rhyme became a distraction from the more scintillating performers on stage. His material speaks to real issues & deserve to be heard, but in such a long production needs greater variety in performance, not just distracting visuals.
There certainly is something to be said for a Ringler Brothers production-style poetry reading, especially where the wild animals & the clowns are the poets themselves.
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