Posted by Ione
I am an author, playwright and poet with a background as a visual artist. As an educator and counselor I specialize in dreams and the creative process, conducting seminars and retreats throughout the world.
Since approximately 1999, I have become an improvising spoken word performer, specializing in experimental narrative forms. It was very exciting to begin to move from reading my writing or performing memorized texts to allowing words and sounds to move freely through me. These texts are inspired by the moment, a moment that includes music, other performers, the surrounding environment and the audience. Sometimes already written texts come through me and morph into new permutations, creating an entirely new version of the original.
I have begun to capture some of these words, putting them down on paper, creating a kind of recycling of remembered texts. My forthcoming book, Nile Night; Remembered Texts from the Deep
Represents a collection of some of these texts along with other writing.
As a writer, I have always been deeply interested in the personal as pathway to the universal. Dreams are our deepest source of creativity, our most intimate expression of who we are. For me, the creative spark is a reflection of the divine. Thus, I have always valued dreams, promoting dream community in others through workshops, retreats and International Dream Festivals and or course, drawing upon them in my own process of making art of all kinds.
I was a journalist, writing for the Village Voice, The Christian Science Monitor, Essence Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Vogue, Ms. and a variety of other publications during the late ‘70s and ‘80s at the onset of what was called the new “personal journalism”, and I enjoyed being able to refer to myself a ‘diarist’ when my journals were first published.
My book, Pride of Family; Four Generations of American Women of Color, has been published as a Classic by Doubleday/Broadway Books. (October 2004). The Audio Book was released in 2005 by Recorded Books.
This memoir is a New York Times Notable Book, and was on the New York Public Library’s List of 25 Books to Remember. Other works include Listening in Dreams, Deep Listening Press 2005 This is a Dream; a Handbook for Deep Dreamers, MOM Press, 2000,The Coffee Table Lover, 1986 Piramida Negra; Collected Poems from 1971-1991,1991 The Night Train to Aswan, 1996 My diaries were published in American Women’s Diaries 1830s-1970s, Ballantine Books 1986. My first published fiction appeared in 1957 in Arcadie; Revue Litteraire, a magazine launched by Jean Cocteau and others in Paris.
Together with Pauline Oliveros as Composer and creator of Sound Design, I have created the intercultural operas Njinga the Queen King, Io and Her and the trouble with Him, and Lunar Opera: Deep Listening For–Tunes.
For The Lunar Opera; Deep Listening For-Tunes in 2000 at Lincoln Center Out of Doors, I created a mythic story line and character structures that would support up to two hundred people, coming together from different cities and countries to work with Pauline’s score . The piece that took place was community building at its best, with Damrosch Park becoming a complete world unto itself, filled with individual cities with participants who interacted with each other. Unsuspecting visitors who happened to be walking through the park that day were welcomed and found themselves to be a part of the extended community.
Njinga the Queen-King was truly an international production, including Europeans, Americans, Africans and Brazilians in the cast. Languages in the play included Njinga’s native Kimbundu, Portuguese, and English. It was performed in Minneapolis,in New York where is opened at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, in Washington, Baltimore and Oakland at Mills College. The play depended upon inclusiveness of the communities in which it was being performed. When we performed in Lisbon, I realized that I needed to create a script especially for the Portuguese, and Pauline crafted the music accordingly.
I created the play in such a manner that local community members would be able to participate in the production after training by our master artists. This proved to be a rich and extraordinarily instructive process for the artists involved as well as for the audiences. The creation of Njinga in each theater over a period of eight years of performances (between 1991 and 1999) was a monumental learning experience for all concerned. Our cast, interacting with each other and with the theater administration and the crews in each location mirrored the encounter of two worlds ( Portuguese and Kongolese) that was taking place on stage.
We worked similarly with Io and Her and the Trouble with Him in 2001 in Madison, WI, casting members of community of the University of Wisconsin’s theater crew, designers and video department; and working with University actors, dancers and singers to create the piece. Additional production of scenes from Io
took place in San Francisco at Zaccho Dance Theater in 2006.
Though I stopped painting while concentrating on Pride of Family I immediately recognized the fact that the directorial process of creating the plays dovetailed with my desire to portray elements visually.
The making of the 20 minute experimental narrative film Dreams of the Jungfrau (completed in 2007) high in the Alps, is a continuation of my strong attachment to the visual arts.
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