Producer Tony Brewer is pleased about the second year of the Writers Guild at Bloomington's Spoken Word Stage.
"This year I was able to include more performances. Cardinal Stage is doing performances both days. The fig tree fellowship radio players are doing a two part radio theatre performance on Saturday. Some of the poets have gathered themselves into make shift poetry groups, so you'll have two or three or four poets performing during the same time. "
The Writers Guild has embraced a wide spectrum of artists. "It's the Spoken Word Stage but we also feature plays, radio theatre, and street theatre. In addition there's a group called The Fourth Wall Ensemble, that's sort of a hybrid music-dance-spoken word mash up," says Brewer.
Heidi Harmon from Cardinal Stage Company explained Cardinal's participation. "Patty Callison, a former member of the MCPL's Children's' Services will be reading from two of our upcoming Cardinal for Kids productions, Knuffle Bunny and Charlotte's Web at noon on Saturday and Sunday at the Spoken Word Stage. Many are familiar with E.B. White's classic Charlotte's Web, but Knuffle Bunny, by Mo Willems is a new contemporary book," adds Harmon. "It's probably better known to children seven years old or younger and their parents."
Novelist and screenwriter Joy Shayne Laughter will be one of the readers. She'll be tantalizing listeners with the first pages of Yu a Ross Lamos Mystery published by Open Books Press. Ross Lamos is a "karmic detective and connoisseur at large." Here are those first tantalizing sentences.
"'Fakes, the stones wanted to speak, three jades gleamed on the black velvet back tray. They were not carved by machines, my lens showed gentle irregularities liked waves on calm water. Power tools and sanders would have created perfectly sharp edges and perfectly flat surfaces. I'd examined hundreds of such quickly shaped jades, mass produced droppings that were as bland as TV listings, these adrift on the velvet were literature…"