COPENHAGEN - jerelyn c gilstrap, independent theatre director, collaborations

This play of Michael Frayn, the recipient of numerous awards in Britain and the U.S., including the Tony Award for Best Play 2000, is a compelling dramatic exploration of history, physics, ethics, politics, and friendship. Copenhagen is an explosive re-imagining of the mysterious wartime meeting between two physics Nobel laureates to discuss the atomic bomb. It is based on an actual event in history - an event involving two old friends who revolutionized physics but who, in later years, find themselves on opposite sides of World War II.

*

Werner Heisenberg, then in charge of nuclear development for the Nazis, made a strange trip to occupied-Copenhagen to see his Danish/Jewish friend and colleague, Niels Bohr. Their collaborations had revolutionized physics in the 1920s. But now the world had changed, and the two friends were on opposite sides in a world war. The meeting was fraught with danger and awkwardness. Heisenberg's reasons for his trip to Copenhagen and what he wanted to say to Bohr are questions that have plagued historians ever since. Nobody alive actually knows why Heisenberg asked for the meeting or what was said.
*
Playwright Frayn has Heisenberg's meeting with Bohr and his wife, Margrethe, take place long after the three are dead, to once again look for the answers and to work out how we ever know why we do what we do. Heisenberg always maintained that he had deliberately led the German program into concentrating on peaceful uses of atomic energy, like reactors. But did he? Or, was he trying to extract from Bohr information about Allied bomb efforts? Or did he simply wish to ask his old mentor whether physicists were morally justified in applying their knowledge to weapons?
*
Frayn does not pretend to solve the mystery: he replays three interpretations of what could have happened in that meeting. While the content of the meeting is left to the viewer's decision, we do know that something terrible happened between the two friends, which destroyed their relationship for the rest of their lives.
*
Along with the scientific issues, there is an extremely passionate interrelation of the three characters: the friendship and colleague relationship that was destroyed, a marriage\partnership that survived the loss of two children and the devastating effects of fleeing one's homeland in the middle of the night to survive Nazi occupancy.
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Also, at the core of the story is the issue of who can or should possess nuclear power, as relevant today as then.

* * * * *

"Copenhagen" Awards:
Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play "Copenhagen" 2000
Outer Critics Circle Award Best Play "Copenhagen" 2000
Tony Best Play Award "Copenhagen" 2000
New York Drama Critics Circle Award Best Foreign Play "Copenhagen" 1999
Evening Standard Award Best Play "Copenhagen" 1998
London Drama Critics' Circle Theatre Award Best Play "Copenhagen" 1998

* * * * *

jerelyn c gilstrap
COLLABORATIONS
Shreveport, Louisiana
Washington, D.C.
New York City
*
Since her move to Shreveport, Ms. Gilstrap has directed A.R. Gurney's Ancestral Voices at East Bank Theatre in Bossier City, Louisiana, and last year, created a staged play reading series in collaboration with Robert Alford, Department of Communications, Louisiana State University Shreveport [LSUS]. The series will continue through the 2009-2010 season in the new LSUS Black Box Theatre.
*
Her current project, Copenhagen, is scheduled to open in September 2009, also at the LSUS Black Box Theatre.
*
D.C. venues where her work has been presented include:
Washington Project for the Arts,
New Arts Theatre
American Sum Times Theatre and Dance Place
as well as
Dixon Place Studio in New York City
* * *
Directorial credits include:
Silence, Landscape and Night (Pinter)
The Sanctity of Marriage (Mamet)
The Miracle Worker (Gibson) and
Strange Snow (Metcalfe)
* * *

Additionally, she has often collaborated with artists of other disciplines:

Her collaboration with choreographer Lloyd Whitmore on

Joseph Chaikin's Re-Arrangements

won second place in

Source Theatre's Summer Festival.

She collaborated with

internationally recognized visual artist
Sam Gilliam
on several productions and
directed and produced two videos about Mr. Gilliam
for the U.S. State Department's Culture Program.
One of the videos accompanied his installation that
traveled to galleries around the world.

* * *

Ms. Gilstrap is the recipient of several

Individual Artist grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

*

She was on the Theatre Department faculty of the

Duke Ellington School of the Arts for several years and was

Artistic Director of Visions Theatre in D.C.

[with partner, Jewel Robinson]

for two consecutive seasons.

*

She has often written about theatre for the

Washington Review of the Arts.

rob macgregor and trish macgregor - authors extraordinaire

for those of you who may not yet have read any of the macgregors' books, [fiction and non-fiction] let me just encourage you/urge you to pick up as many of their books as you can -

their main current focus is on a new book dealing with synchronicity and all that it encompasses, but their interests and expertise include also yoga, the bermuda triangle, astrology, ufo's, etc -

while i've not yet had the opportunity to read their fiction, let me just tell you that those non-fictional books which i have read [and am currently reading] are superb - superb in their content and in their ease of reading for anyone - their research is more than comprehensive and their grasp of the subject matter is overwhelming -

while my macgregor library at the moment is limited to about five of their books, it is growing rapidly - in addition to their writing, they have developed a form of yoga which incorporates their perspective/knowledge of things metaphysical -

if you are looking for interesting intriguing informative, pick up their books and be sure to check out their "synchronicity" site here at blogspot -

alice again...and again...and...

Caterpillar: Who are YOU?

Alice: This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.
I -- I hardly know, sir, just at present --
at least I know who I was when I got up this morning,
but I think I must have been changed several times since then.


credit to lewis carroll and alice in wonderland

lifedreaming...lewis carroll "alice"

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:
Ever drifting down the stream --
Lingering in the golden gleam --
Life what is it but a dream?

neils bohr...

...speaking of quantum mechanics and the subatomic world, stated that quantum physics is not only stranger than we think,

it is stranger than we can think.

It is the observer who creates what he 'sees'

in the quantum world,

without the observer,

there is no existence.

more jung...

It all depends on how we look at things,
and not on how they are themselves.

einstein on INTUITION

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.

There comes a leap in consciousness,

call it Intuition or what you will,

the solution comes to you and

you don't know how or why.

carl g jung, constellations and collective unconscious

We are born at a given moment in a given place and like vintage years of wine we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything else.

Astrology is one of the intuitive methods like the I Ching, geomantics, and other divinatory procedures. It is based upon the synchronicity principle, i.e. meaningful coincidence. ... Astrology is a naively projected psychology in which the different attitudes and temperaments of man are represented as gods and identified with planets and zodiacal constellations.

The starry vault of heaven is in truth the open book of cosmic projection, in which are reflected the mythologems, i.e., the archetypes. In this vision astrology and alchemy, the two classical functionaries of the psychology of the collective unconscious, join hands.

chopra on synchronicity...

My own life has been touched often by synchronicity, so much so that now I get on an airplane expecting the passenger in the next seat to be surprisingly important to me, either just the voice I need to hear to solve a problem or a missing link in a transaction that needs to come together....

... I believe that

all coincidences

are messages

from the unmanifest –

they are like angels without wings,

so to speak,

sudden interruptions of life -

from a deeper level...

These messages come from a level of mind that knows life as a whole, and ultimately we would have to say we are really communicating with ourselves – the whole is talking to its parts. Synchronicity steps outside the brain and works from a larger perspective.

Eliminating mind from the equation won't work because the only alternative is chance. ... One reason Jung invented a new word for these meaningful coincidences is that the normal rational way of explaining them turned out to be too unwieldy. If I sit next to a stranger on a plane who is looking for a certain book idea to publish and that happens to be the very idea I am working on, the explanation of statistical probability does not apply.

Although not easy to calculate, the odds of most synchronous events are preposterous. Anytime two people meet and discover that they have the same name or phone number, the odds are millions to one against their encounter. Yet this occasionally happens, and the simple explanation – that they were meant to meet – makes more sense than random numbers, but it isn't scientific. In spiritual reality, however, literally everything happens because it is meant to. ... At synchronous moments, you get a peek at just how connected your life is, how completely woven into the infinite tapestry of existence.

creating the creation...

I was a hidden treasure

and desired to be known:
therefore I CREATED

THE CREATION

in order

to be known.

-- Sufi creation myth

yeats on universal subconscious

Spiritus Mundi

is Latin, meaning

spirit or soul of the world -

the spirit or soul of the universe

with which all individual souls are connected

through the 'Great Memory,'

which Yeats held to be a universal subconscious

in which the human race preserves its past memories.

It is thus a source of symbolic images for the poet.

Counterparts for the Garou include the Past Life background,

and the Umbra and its denizens.

---. "The Second Coming."

Norton Anthology of English Literature.

Eds. M. H. Abrams, et al. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York:

Norton, 1993. 1880-81.

song of synchronicity

With one breath,
with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity
A sleep trance,
a dream dance
A shaped romance
Synchronicity
A connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectable
Yet nothing is invincible
If we share this nightmare
Then we can dream
Spiritus mundi
If you act as you think
The missing link
Synchronicity
We know you,
they know me
Extrasensory
Synchronicity
A star fall,
a phone call
It joins all
Synchronicity
It's so deep,
it's so wide
You're inside
Synchronicity
Effect without cause
Sub-atomic laws,
scientific pause
Synchronicity...

[Thank you: Sting and The Police/Synchronicity I]

school days...

some of my earliest memories have to do with the extraordinary being ordinary to me - with paranormal being perfectlynormal - one of the earliest ordinary/normal experiences occurred when i was about seven or eight years old - my father was a purchasing agent for the government so we travelled very frequently - it was nothing at all for me to not be in a school long enough to receive a six-week report card - in any event, new experiences new places new people were the norm for me - nothing stagnant nothing ever the same -

this particular incident was on my first day of elementary school in camden arkansas - it was the middle of the school year - my mother took me to the office to enroll me and then the principal walked us out into the hallway and said she would show me my locker and take me to my classroom - but i told her that she didn't have to because i already knew where my locker was and it's number and i already knew where my classroom was and who my teacher was - of course, she and my mother attempted to persuade me that i did not as i had never been to this school before - nor had i ever been to this town before -

it was not a rectangular shaped building but had a wing or two - i remember walking straight down the hall to the left and walking up to a locker which i knew was mine - and it was - then i walked ahead of the principal and my mother, down another hall to the right to my new classroom - i was right -

while i no longer remember my locker number or my teacher's name, the experience itself remains more than a little vivid - i can still see the hallways - the off-white tile floors - my dark green olive-colored locker and the face of my new teacher as if it had happened yesterday -

i also remember approaching the school and entering, feeling/knowing exactly where to go and who i would see - to me, i HAD been there before, somehow at some time - and i was perturbed by the confusion of the adults who tried to discount that knowledge -

pathway to the stars and beyond...

Dreams create their own pathways,

if you don't try to force things.

theuniverse@tut.com

[my "note from the universe" may 26, 2009]

simone's synch-song?

just now i was sitting thinking contemplating watching the sunshine play on a few pillowly clouds as i played on my laptop and a string of words came to mind "come on daddy, feed my soul, i need some sugar in my bowl" which i had remembered from a song of nina simone's many moons ago - i've no idea why i was thinking about those lyrics - i mean [with the exception of two years ago when i put together some poetic words for someone, which i eventually posted to gypsywoman world may 15], i can't even remember the last time i listened to nina simone - maybe a year or more ago - and certainly had not mentioned or discussed her with anyone in at least that long - but while i'm sitting here humming those words aloud actually, my sister [with whom i've not spoken in almost two weeks] called from louisiana and after a minute or so, said, "oh, by the way, i wanted to tell you i just came across a website called 'simone's world' and it belongs to nina's daughter - you have to see it!" -

post-it notes to self

obe self
jerilyn
baby turning
alan alda
lottery numbers
triple numbers
phone
believe v. know
injured construction worker
car accident
charles injury
painting divided self
painting woman/tree

dreamjourney

i had just finished the previous post which caused me to remember a wonderfully exotic spiritual dreamjourney of a number of years ago - about which i will speak at another time - and within moments i found this image which included symbols from my dream -

the maelstrom...

yesterday was one of those days - and the day before, actually - one of those days when it seemed that every thought i had every action i took every word i read everything i saw or heard was interconnected intertwined each with the other and with the thoughts words actions of others, especially others with whom i have been in recent contact and/or whom i have just "met" so to speak -

things like picking up a book i'd not read and opening it to the page with a name someone else had just mentioned but of whom i'd never heard - picking up the phone before it rang - walking into the room talking about a particular person and flipping on the television to find a news story being broadcast about that person - seeing the same triple numbers in multiple places as i was out and about, out of a ream of paper picking the exact number of sheets i needed [without counting], extracting from several bottles the exact number of pills necessary to fill a particular container, picking up a grocery item on a whim and my daughter later calling me to ask me to pick up that exact item, -

the list goes on and on - the content of each somewhat trivial/innocuous in nature, comparatively speaking, at least - and these kinds of things are not at all unusual to me - or even to most of us - on isolated occasions or irregular times, etc - but the past few days, for me, the frequency has been almost constant - at one point early on the other day, i thought i would start jotting them down but they continued with such frequency that i found i simply would have to record every single thing i had done or thought or said or had seen, etc - and so, i was unable to even begin a list -

and this, too, has happened in times past - this constancy of these kinds of things - one correlation i believe may be my recent "new journey" in the quest for more knowledge and "visiting for the first time, and re-visiting" this part of ME, thus, having ME more open and receptive and cognizant of possibilities -

happily, these incidents of the last few days have been rather light-natured in tone - i mean, nothing terribly negative or earth-shattering - no associated tragic incidents or devastating illnesses, etc - but it caused a flood of memories of all the other times in my life when the associations were not so "light" or "unblimished by tragedy" - times when i had to consciously diligently "work", to "focus", to "shut 'it' off", to "stop the flow" of the overwhelming incidents about which i felt such a responsibility - and it seems, too, that time of year somehow plays a role in the frequency of these things for me - it seems that spring and summer have been more often the periods of intensity that i remember, anyway - perhaps there is a connection with the geomagnetic activity of the periods -

the whole point of this rambling is that i have set up this blog to memorialize to share my own personal experiences of the "extraordinary" - experiences which we all have and with which i, anyway, continue to be fascinated - but in these few days, have been unable to put finger to keyboard to do so - in any event, i look forward to this journey, this deeper exploration, this quest/this thirst for more knowledge for more growth - bon voyage to us all -

on SYNCHRONICITY

from the dalai lama:

I am open
to the
guidance
of synchronicity
and do not let
expectations
hinder my path.

IMAGINATION

Imagination sees the complete reality,

it is where past, present and future meet...

Imagination is limited neither to the reality which is apparent - nor to one place.

It lives everywhere.

It is at a centre and feels the vibrations of all the circles within which east and west are virtually included.

Imagination is the life of mental freedom.

It realizes what everything is in its many aspects ...

Imagination does not uplift: we don't want to be uplifted, we want to be more completely aware.

Kahlil Gibran's words quoted from Mary Haskell's journal dated 7th June 1912

buddha on THOUGHT

All that we are
is the result of
what we have thought.
If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought,
pain follows him.
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him,
Like a shadow that never leaves him.

IMAGINE REALITY

if YOU can IMAGINE it
you can have it -
this is the lesson to learn
it couldn't be any easier -

REALITY is not what your eyes show your MIND
but what your MIND CREATES for your eyes to see -

YOU are not limited by logic - the past - or the world around you -
YOU are not even of the world around you -
YOU are SUPERNATURAL - pure SPIRIT -

YOU came first -
MAGIC, MIRACLES AND LUCK

are the consequences of understanding this -
the inevitible result of DREAMING and ACTING

in spite of appearances -

YOU are ever so close -
stay the course
it won't be very much longer -

if
YOU
can
IMAGINE
it
YOU
can
HAVE
it...


author unknown

INTENTIONAL INTENTIONS...

WE
ARE
each
responsible
for our own
past[s]
present[s]
future[s]
with our intentions
with our thoughts
WE
CREATE
ourselves
our world[s]...

words by gypsywoman

the milky way - in or out?

i just came across this interesting article and wanted to share:

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/32272

IMAGINATION

you see things

and say,

"why?" -

but

i DREAM things

that never were

and say,

"why not?"

george bernard shaw...

buddha on THOUGHT...

All that we are
is the result of
what we have thought.
If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him.
If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought,
happiness follows him,
like a shadow that never leaves him.

IMAGINATION...

First have being in your mind.

Make real in your mind then bring that being into reality.

The genius is s/he who sees what is not yet and causes it to come to

be...

peter nivio zarlenga

on SYNCHRONICITY

from the daili lama

"i am open

to the

guidance

of

synchronicity

and

go not let

expections

hinder

my

path"

1989 Nobel Peace Prize, b.1935, Head of the Dge-lugs-pa order of Tibetan Buddhists

on IMAGINATION

from carl sagan

i m a g i n a t i o n

will often

carry us

to worlds

that

never were -

but

without it

we go

nowhere...

the gypsy travel journel

we all are gypsies of a sort
wandering traveling through this life
other lives
space
and
time
here
there
and
yon
on roads less travelled -

this is a written and visual journal of my own travels -
imagined and/or real -
come along with me -
we'll dance
among the stars under the sun and over the moon -
we'll share our stories
around the campfire -
come along -