Sarah Browning

Dear D.C. Poets Against the War,

Please allow me to bring to your attention a new festival involving the crossover between poetry and performance: The Yockadot Poetics Theatre Festival, centered in Alexandria, with satellite events at Gunston Arts Center, George Mason University, and in Baltimore April 26th-30th; then, our May 5th finale takes place at the United States Patent and Trade Offices in Alexandria, for an unusual--perhaps ironic--interface between a government institution and the raw unarmed power of the written word, spoken out... between bureacracy and the disarmingly outspoken. This date represents the first use by an outside organization of the USPTO campus as an arts and cultural activities venue.

Yockadot Poetics Theatre Festival will be presenting more than 25 events and performances during its celebration of "poetry leaping off the page." For a better sense of the festival as a whole, and its flavor, please check out our website at http://www.yptfest.org/.

The Yockadot mission with this festival is to showcase and define "poetics theatre"--the application of contemporary poetry practices to performance and theatre--as well as to foster poetry and the presentation of poetry in its home base of Alexandria, Virginia, and surrounding areas. The festival has over 40 poets and performers from around the country preparing events that exemplify "poetics theatre" in progressive development from poetry readings to "text" performance art, and onward, through to staged readings of plays by contemporary poets, such as Lee Ann Brown, Thalia Field, Tina Darragh, and Brent Cunningham.

Of interest to politically-minded poets, please note that much of this work is highly socially-conscious and provocative. The debut of Tina Darragh's play Bad I.O.U. (May 5th) takes on the health care system with righteous confrontational directness as well as humor. Just the titles of poet Rodrigo Toscano's pieces (April 28th at Del Ray Artisans Gallery) indicate the activated sensibilities here: "Great Awakening," "Spine," "Pig Angels of the Americlypse"...

By the way, Toscano's development last summer of his Collapsible Poetics Theatre Company in New York represents for Yockadot a wonderful serendipity, synchronicity, and/or outright success in communicating the concept of "poetics theatre" fairly widely even before the first major showcase of it through our festival.

For more details as to our events schedule click on http://www.yptfest.org/schedule.htm.

We are funded by the Alexandria Arts Commission and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and sponsored by the Alexandria Performing Arts Association.

As an innovative way to celebrate National Poetry Month, please come out and support the Yockadot Poetics Theatre Festival!

Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely yours,

M. Magnus

director, Yockadot Poetics Theatre Project
festival coordinator, Yockadot Poetics Theatre Festival
secretary, Alexandria Performing Arts Association
secretary, Alexandria Arts Forum

703-400-2984
www.yptfest.org


magmagnus@earthlink.net