RE@DS READING WITH TOM COMITTA: sf guerrilla opera at the berkeley art museum
[youtube_video width=399 height=233]Guerrilla[/youtube_video]
[ Feb 10 12 ]
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“I invite everyone in this room to sing with me from texts found in this room for 40 minutes—which sounds insane, but—I’d like to give you some context…”
In one of the more unusual and exhilarating experiences of, I think, my life, I was in a roomful of people able and encouraged to “sing” whatever we felt like “singing” at whatever volume we wanted for 40 straight minutes. Everyone else was doing it. Watch the first video and the first 9:00 of the second to learn more, click here and then finish the second video. Or just watch the videos (but the link has full text of the explanation, which you might want to reference).
We’re talking about singing the Wall Street Journal, as a group, in public; picking up a book at random and repeating the words of an arbitrary line as though your life depended on them; chanting Can You Hear Me Now on the Civic Center BART platform mid-protest; introducing yourself to every person in the room with the same sentence and the same goofy smile, and so on: anything you can imagine and feel like doing.
There were maybe 30 people in The Reading Room of Berkeley Art Museum to watch/hear Tom Comitta‘s poetry. Instead is the wrong word. What we got was… 30 people in a small room transforming themselves and each other for 40 minutes. It’s called Guerilla Opera and it happens… you should try to be a part of one.
Above is the entire event, beginning with an introduction by David Brazil [more here and here] (who co-curates this Re@ds series with Suzanne Stein) and some explanation by Tom Comitta. Click “Play” to watch all, “Next” to skip forward, or the small “Insert” screen (to the right of the video time) to see thumbnails and watch them directly.
[ Resources ]
- Again, here’s a link to the mini-essay Tom reads to introduce some of the concepts of Guerilla Opera. More on this later — have a look first!
- I’m meeting up to talk with Tom later this week. If you have anything you’d like me to ask him, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind answering…
- First, you might want to check out his other projects: soUNDtext and calmaplombprombombbalm.
- The next reading in this series, featuring Monica Peck, is this Friday, Feb 24 [here for a full list]
[…] breaks, it was a rewarding endurance test and an epic occasion. Much like I was after I left the Guerilla Opera at BAM—singing (louder than usual) in the streets and making eye contact with my vocals—I […]
[…] even if you head to Literary Death Match [at Beatbox, with a stellar lineup] or the BAM reading [this happened last time] or to howl about the moon with Matthew Zapruder [yup], or to get you some Terry Taplin [check […]
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[…] A video recording of G.O. No.9 (the final guerrilla opera) can be found on litseen. Many thanks go out to Evan Karp for his video and written documentation of this […]
[…] For Guerilla Opera No. 9, the concert hall was, again, walled by its libretto: scores of books. On February 10th, 2012, at The Reading Room of the Berkeley Arts Museum, the opera was an echo of the company’s first: for 40 minutes, the author/s of the library flew off the shelves and shared the acoustic space before together returning to (and out again from) the ears of the audience-performers [5]. […]