A few weeks into the rehearsal process, dramaturg Kimberly put together a found poetry prompt for the cast and production team to participate in.
The goal was to take text from The Tempest, other Shakespeare plays, and everyday life and combine them into a meaningful poem. Participants pulled from things like social media posts, books, songs, other poems, class notes, and more to create their poetry.
A week after participants received the prompt, Kimberly held a workshop where they had time to combine their lists of text into a poem, and then share them in small groups.
The outcome of the workshop was a circle of individuals who each came up with lines of poetry that reflected beautiful artistry and personality.
Here are some of those poems.
Song of the New World
We rip sweet airs from the new world
half my soul and sleep made from a thousand twangling instruments
Legacy is Misery recognizing the earth by touch alone
We are full of noises
Strange and honest, delighted in wisdom
the courage to change
The Hum after a long sleep, when Hell is empty
Blind breaths, people at the end
Start dreaming riches
Bedfellow to devils
The afeard cure
We wake in silence, in waste
feeling nothing to not feel anything
Accepting the serenity of Sometimes
When it belongs to us always
It is the difference
Abby Aune
Stephano
Thou art infected
Can imagination form a shape
with so full soul
that does everything with a clear heart?
To you whose pastimes make midnight rejoice:
I am out of patience.
I know not where to hide my head
and burn in many places.
long live “Amen” -
marvelous sweet music,
awakened by an evil nature
transported and rapt in secret studies,
still still still
stuck
in my throat.
mine honesty puts to utterance
that the breaking and the breathing
of my greatest joys,
sweet thoughts and
laughter at night,
makes me upset.
I cry it o’er again;
my good will is to it,
thou wondrous soul,
because you’ve
known me bone deep,
I won’t turn into you
Kimberly Hodgman
Dramaturg
In the Blink of Goodbye
I remember damage
I couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what I wanted to be real.
why am I always looking at life through a window?
I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been
A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything - all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it. Is there time?
the most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.
You're beautiful, but you're empty. No one could die for you.
if only my heart were stone
My face is mine, my hands are mine, my mouth is mine, but I'm not. I'm yours
I was too young to know how to love her
There's no cavalry. No one will magically appear and save you in the end.
Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us
to the monsters, we’re the monsters
i don’t want to live the wrong life and then die
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player. That struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more. It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
and so he plays his part
We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?
Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds.
It doesn't matter what you do...so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.
keep a little fire burning, however small, however hidden.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear.
Lynnlee Johnson
Alonso
To be me Lost in the Waves
Me. Just me. Nothing but me and a silent black sea
Driven by a need. Perhaps a curiosity
Reach into the unknown
Move in a different direction. A different direction.
I am cheerful yet. I am lost.
I am a fool lost in the waves.
No more I am…
Me. Just me.
The flow of water; passionate, wild waters
Breathe. Just breathe.
How beauteous. A vision. An awe inspiring work of art
Art. If by your art
Comfort and chaos
I don’t know the way
…the waves…
Still. I follow. A simple curiosity…
Silent. Be silent and breathe
A flow of water, occasionally displaced by a bit of debris, a breeze
A cosmic disturbance
O’ yonder blessed moon
Never seen me before.
Just me. Me and the Sea
Hell is the absence of things you long for.
A longing for me and the sea.
Just me.
Katherine Warmka
Miranda, Dramaturg