Bloomsday is around the corner.
As ever, we at the Wild Geese Players of Seattle
are staging a reading from James Joyce's Ulysses,
at the Elliott Bay Bookstore, 101 S. Main St,
on Sat 14th June 2008 at 4:30pm.
In the Oxen of the Sun,
Leopold Bloom visits the Holles Street Maternity Hospital
and falls in with Stephen Dedalus
and a crowd of drunken medical students,
in a chapter that not only
recapitulates the forty weeks of pregnancy,
it also constitutes a tour through
the development of the English language.
I play Stephen Dedalus, the second most important character of the book.
In this chapter, it is neither a large nor a small role.
Behind the scenes, I was responsible for turning Joyce's text
into a script suitable for a staged reading.
A few months ago, I despaired of it.
It was a daunting challenge technically,
and we didn't have nearly enough readers.
I'm happy to say that I found my way through the labyrinth of dramaturgy
and a large crop of new goslings joined the Players for this year's reading.
Finally, let me repost a Google Ad that I saw beside
one of our internal emails:
Natural Geese Repellent
Enviromentally Safe Unit Rids Geese Maintenance Free, Solar Powered