Digitalis Purpurea

Traditionally, masks worn by performers in Commedia dell’Arte theatre were made of leather and covered half the performer’s face. The mouth was left uncovered so the audience could see the actor’s mouth move and so they could speak more clearly. Each mask was made specifically for one actor, and the exaggerated facial features indicated which character they played and the extremity of their personality .

Costume Designer Colleen Dobbin has been working hard preparing the masks for our upcoming play The Soup is Served at the Key City Public Theatre in Port Townsend, WA. Here are some of her beautiful initial designs:

Just heard from Terry Tennesen, the set designer for “The Soups is Served” — an adaptation of a Goldoni masterpiece by Germano to be produced by Key City Public Theatre in Port Townsend, WA in April/May 2011. This is the initial design:

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to build resilience into a system over the past few years, especially after some health problems I was unaware of culminated in several attacks of acute severe pancreatitis that left me quite literally re-building my body, mind and ways of being thoughtfully and methodically, bit by bit, pain by pain, awakening by awakening.

In Thinking in Systems, Donella Meadows describes resilience as: “a measure of a system’s ability to survive and persist within a variable environment. The opposite of resilience is brittleness or rigidity.”  According to her, the highest levels of resilience are found in feedback loops (or balancing systems) that “can learn, create, design, and evolve ever more complex restorative structures.” She then goes on to use the human body as an example of an amazingly complex, resilient system. (Meadows, 2008, p76)

I find Meadows’ example of the human example to be quite poignant in reference to my personal experience of watching and feeling the systems in my body reach a point where its limits where overwhelmed and began to malfunction, go haywire and eventually shut down, one by one, and then later, out of necessity to survive, moving intentionally and deliberately through some of  incredibly complex, normally automatic tasks performed by the body that we often take for granted.

While my body was healing, I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do to rebuild my life in a way that would support my newly discovered health challenges and allow me to adapt to persevere given the quite daunting new list of limitations upon me. It was during that time, in the spring of 2009, that I conceived of my personal website, La Fermata, as a way to represent and share my personal artwork and thoughts with the world. As I would consider my intentions and goals for the project, the words “Live, Learn, Grow” would constantly come to mind, and I decided to use them (and the slight modification “Pause, Sustain, Grow”–which makes a reference to the musical notation fermata) to represent my work. I  find their direct correlation to Meadows’ conditions for high resilience to be noteworthy and self-affirming
.

For me, to live is to create and design. For me, to learn or teach is to love. For me, to grow is to evolve.

Re-learning and re-building resilience in my body has been a slow process that is still not finished and may never be. It has required dedication and an exhausting amount of attention to detail, relationships and systems. I am thankful for the experience it has given me in revealing a higher level of a whole-system view of health and wellbeing. I am thankful for the experiences of pain, of suffering, not-knowing, fear, of despair and hopelessness:  they allow me to deeply relate to our human struggles with resilience–they have instilled within me a deep sense of compassion for others and a strong desire to help people Live, Learn, and Grow.

An eclectic actor and emergent writer, Daniele has always had a strong passion for all forms of the arts. His Italian currriculum can be read here:  http://www.digitalispurpurea.org/it/cosee/chi-siamo/daniele-aureli

Dearest friends and colleagues,

I hope your new year is filled with hope, joy, health, laughter, prosperity and peace. Not a single day passes that I don’t reflect on how fortunate and grateful I am to know so many kind, creative, generous and loving people. My life is richer and more vibrant for having known and shared a part of my path with you.

Spero che il tuo nuovo anno è pieno di speranza, gioia, salute, risate, di prosperità e di pace. Non passa un singolo giorno che non rifletto su quanto come fortunata e grata di conoscere cosi tante persone gentile, creativi, generosi e amorevole. La mia vita è più ricca per averti conosciuto e per aver condiviso una parte del mio cammino con te.

I leave you with a favourite poem of mine:

Vi lascio con uno delle mie poesie preferite:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

--ee cummings

Snowflakes and Sunbeams,

Brittney

Una imbarazzante pioggia, sottile e continua, ricopre come una inesorabile cappa, l’intreccio di vie luminose e regolari che, dal mare, salgono nel centro della città. Una di queste, la 15° NW, accompagna tutte le sere a casa, decine di sopravvissuti nel gran bazar dell’autobus numero 15. Parte dal centro della città; attraversa Queen Anne, sfiora senza neppure toccarla, Garfield e violenta Market Street tagliandola in due  con fendenti schizofrenici di Hitchockiana memoria.Il conducente, inconsapevole autore del massacro, ripete sempre le stesse frasi ad ogni fermata, come fosse un attore di teatro incantatosi sulla stessa battuta. Lungo le larghe vie, si sparge un profumo talmente complesso ed indefinito che non si riesce a fotografare: tabacco, ottani che vanno a mille,  birra, musica e grida incomprensibili.  Un barbone  guarda impietosito decine di bipedi impazziti che corrono, isolati dalla solitudine del loro I-pod, ansiosi di rientrare nel proprio nucleo dopo una intera giornata passata al lavoro: lui sta preparandosi il letto, in compagnia del suo carrello della spesa che contiene tutta la sua vita, sotto il portico asciutto di un megastore a Ballard; crocevia di letterati e ciclisti lavoratori che, di giorno, sfrecciano in un turbinio di cravatte incontrollate.  Decine di luci , con il loro accendersi impertinente,  si moltiplicano in forme ed ombre che cambiano la fisionomia del paesaggio riflesso capovolto in una pozza d’acqua piovana sul ciglio della strada. Passa un Pick up, un altro, una Ford… rumori di motori stanchi e affamati di hamburger e burritos sfrigolanti che li aspettano impazienti di essere addentati.

Mercoledì 17 marzo 2010.  Brittney, Francesco ed io. Treno alle 07,40 a Narni Scalo. Arrivo a Tiburtina alle 08,50. Metropolitana: spinte, voci, caos.  Piazza Esedra, caffè all’aperto, sole, discussione sulla presenza dello spirito: sensazione di benessere totale. Via Nazionale, via Mazzarino. Scuderie del quirinale. Fila all’ingresso (per fortuna breve..) Ingresso mostra. Primo piano, gente, adulti, studenti, anziani…  Poca luce, bisbiglii.. ”Bacco, 1597″ La potenza espressiva di Caravaggio.

“La cattura di Cristo nell’orto,  1602″ Caravaggio è presente nel quadro con una lanterna in mano, la gente lo riconosce come se fosse un amico di sempre… la forza dell’illuminazione.  Ancora gente che parla sottovoce, squilla un telefonino e la commessa si precipita a redarguire l’arrogante signore in giacca e cravatta che non lo ha spento. ”I bari  1595″ La gente sembra voler dire al giovane ignaro, che deve fare attenzione, perché il personaggio alle sue spalle sta mostrando al compare le sue carte…  ”I musici, 1594 – 95″ Atmosfera diversa, luce più forte, giovani ragazzi come modelli. La signora che parla a voce alta dicendo “Quelli erano tutti amanti di Caravaggio” e, per un attimo, uno dei ragazzi raffigurati sulla tela, sembra guardare la donna in modo severo.. Francesco sta seduto nella saletta. Si riposa un momento. Lo imito e parlo con lui di Caravaggio. Quando arriverà Brittney, che è americana, le parleremo del “nostro” Caravaggio per provocarla scherzosamente: “Quando mai ce lo avete avuto voi, un artista simile?”  Ancora buio, mormorii, sensazioni.

“Giuditta e Oloferne, 1599″ Il volto di Oloferne appare come sbigottito mentre acquista coscienza del fatto che sta realmente morendo..   La visita sta terminando.  Terrazza delle scuderie del Quirinale,  Roma. L’altare della patria, San Pietro, L’olimpico… Di nuovo in via Nazionale, stazione Termini, self service, cesto di frutta e…  Caravaggio ancora fra noi!

Germano Rubbi

Last week, Germano and I found ourselves driving through the winding hills of Lazio on a tranquil Sunday afternoon.  He mentioned that there was a beautiful convent in the nearby town of Celleno that had been transformed into a co-op hotel where he had once participated in a workshop called “Sensory Integration and its Role in Art Therapy.” I asked if we could go take a look and we decided to go check it out.

The Convento S. Giovanni Battista is perched upon a little hill in Celleno, a small town halfway between Orvieto and Viterbo. Built in 1610, the monastery was purchased by four families who created a co-operative in the 1980s and restored to its original simple beauty.

It now hosts a vast array of workshops and seminars from around the world, and has been so successful that they are booked out almost 2 years in advance by repeat customers. There are flower and vegetable gardens outside, simple rooms with beautiful views, a large dining room, a practice/workshop/performance space where the chapel used to be, and a tidy little breakfast bar.

The families who purchased and restored the convent say that they came together and were united around some common shared interests: political, social, spiritual, cultural and work-ethic sensibility and this quote on their website left me feeling hopeful that more collaborative endeavors of this nature can be created in the future:

“Il mondo e` nelle mani di coloro che hanno il coraggio di sognare e di correre il rischio di vivere i propri sogni.”

“The world is in the hands of those who have the courage to dream and run the risk of actually living their dreams.”