Contributed by:
Tabitha Dial, YourHub.com
Article Contributed on: 2/11/2007 8:19:30 AM
Words of Art was going to be unlike anything I've seen before: art displayed on a big screen at the back of a stage and actors spilling the words of 14 writers into a lone microphone for an audience of -- well, I didn't know how many people might come, but I think I saw 200 or more in the audience (220 is the final count).
For poetry readings in Denver, I think a turnout of 80 people is outstanding and more than that is stellar. Before
Stories on Stagepresented Words of Art on Feb. 10, the biggest audiences I have joined for literary events in Denver, following
Maya Angelou's
appearance at the Metro State College of Denverin 2005 were
book signingsat
Tattered Coveror annual poetry readings at the
Denver Woman's Press Club.
I began to get nervous about the event about 45 minutes before curtain. I wasn't reading my poem, inspired by a piece of artwork called
The Hotness, by
Colin Livingston, but people were paying $12 a ticket to hear it and the works of 13 other writers.
I remained nervous until about half way through
Jeffrey Nickelson's reading of
A Hard Place, by
Denver Post theater writer
John Moore, the piece performed right after my modest 24-line poem. This was by far the largest group ever to hear my work and no, the spotlight wasn't going to turn on me at any point in the evening. But my leg was shaking.
Even as I listened to amazing writing, I remained nervous. I adored
Futility, a piece performed by Nickelson and written by
Will Guthrie, of Littleton. He wrote about Icarus, who died when he flew too close to the sun, using the wings his father had made for him (I don't think you can go wrong with
mythology and poetry). I clinged to every mythological reference, every allusion to flight; Nickelson'sphenomenal voice.
Then theaudiencelaughed again and again atthe humor of
The Racial Hygiene of Ashtanga Yoga, read by
Jason Henning and writen by
Tim Roessler. Roessler's narrator finds love on a yoga mat, struggling with yoga positions and the fact that "(his) attraction violated every principal he held" since he was young. He had such a difficult time approaching the woman he lusted after that he "willed rather than spoke his invitation."
Love in the Time of Cognitive Neuorscience, written by
Emily Sinclair, inspired by
Evan Colbert's
Fear Factorand read by
Mercedes Perez, was full of details of a struggling relationship and current events and was generously sprinkled with humor, as well. Beautiful words, too: "We are enamored with each other and death belongs to other people," Sinclair wrote, when her characters fell in love around the time that
Christopher Reeve died.
"Sometimes the worst place to be is at home," Sinclair wrote when she addressed news of Hurricane Katrina. I really loved that she referred to news item after news item and shared her poignant observations.
Then
Tierra Bonser read my poetry. Bonser read it almost exactly as I would have, and I loved her voice. She is a junior at Pueblo High School and she won the Stories on Stage's Take Five high school competition. To make her even cooler (how could she be?), she also plays lacrosse.
I loved the evening and thank my brother and my parents for coming up to see Words of Art and have dinner with myself and
Alex. I'm ready to keepsubmitting my work and hope others are inspired to pursue their creative spirits, too. Maybe an actor will be reading your writing on a stage near you soon ... maybe you are the artist who will inspire an event like Words of Art.
Thanks for the read.