Author Archive
About Dharma Broads
A brief summary of past DB productions and participants: Past shows took place over 3 day weekends of Augusts, 2004-7, to soldout audiences at Katherine Owens’s Undermain Theatre. Each artist contributed multiple vignettes, stitched into the fabric of the whole; and all relating to a central theme. The original production featured a core cast of Karen Minzer, Tammy Gomez, Laney Yarber, Isabella-Russell Ides, with each subsequent show incorporating new artists selected to fit the moment and overarching themes
Dharma Broads I: Yoga Fusion Theater: Alice Lee, Isabella Russell-Ides, Rod Russell-Ides, Laney Yarber, Tammy Gomez, Karen Minzer, Adrian Bronough, Tex Venturous, Emily Aberg and Anna Minzer. Anne Waldman and Jello Biafra appeared via Dial-a-Poet Television videos and ambient video provided by Suze Riddle, Dave Hynds, and Ira Cohen. Maria Golia introduced the show, live, from Cairo. Technical support: Scott Means. Stage manager: Suze Riddle.
Dharma Broads II: The Arc of Awareness: Letitia Eldredge, John Fullingwider, Isabella Russell-Ides, Tammy Gomez, Chinook Wusduh, Karen Minzer, Laney Yarber, call-in reading by Ed Sanders, who described the Dharma Broads Productions as a “fear of Fall” project. Technical support: Cesar Herrera. Stage manager: Debs Phillips.
Dharma Broads III: Zenphrastic: Tammy Gomez, Laney Yarber, Karen Minzer, Ricardo Garza, Lisa Huffaker, April Bartos, Eileen Maxey, and Isabella Russell-Ides debuting a full-cast trailer of Chalk Temple, which later became an award winning play length production. Ira Cohen appears via Dial-in reading. Technical support: Mark Ridlen. Stage manager: Tim Cloward
Room for Beauty
“In the throws of the first covid quarantine, 2020, I returned to my life which had been shut down, anticipating a year of travel. Mexico, the expected first leg, took me to Guadalajara, where I met a wonderful art compatriot, Lou Garza, Professor of art at Monterrey Tec, Guadalajara. Apparent, after one month, my year of travel was cancelled, as was a collaborative piece in the works for Lou’s class at the university.
This home movie represents the confusion of exile and return, where nothing will ever be the same. Pagan musings, aided by my youtube gurus; and inspired by the tumult of pandemic, and the murder of George Floyd, I find a transformation thru trauma and sin-eaters of the world, with nature as savior. Video ends at 6:15, music continues for live performance accompaniment. Music by Jaap Blonk and Ronald Shannon Jackson, Sun Calling. “
One of Texas’s most celebrated performance artist Laney Yarber brings her charismatic and free associative magnetism to The Dharma Beauty Pageant. Laney Yarber is an artist whose work and influence has had a important impact on the state’s cultural life. Her work is part history (personal-area-occult), part installation, often multi-media, with great mastery of the craft of theater, sculpture, spoken word, and visual special effects. She is the recipient of many awards and grants, studied with Robert Wilson, and is an original cast member of Dharma Broads I-III. Laney leaves her fans and even her diva-to-diva antagonists crying for more. Never enough. Never enough.
Ronald Shannon Jackson’s music is featured at the end of Make Room for Beauty
WordSpace presents
Web-Staged Performance Art TV
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The Dharma Beauty Pageant
-WebStaged Performance Art TV-
Due to the Pandemic: Due to the Pandemic: Due to the Pandemic:
The previously scheduled production of The Dharma Beauty Pageant has been re-imagined into website-staged trailer docu-introduction of cast members. Click here to read more on this project. The show runs through March and includes an ekphrastic writing contest
Juried by Mairead Case
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Stay tuned for upcoming happenings on
Intergalactic WordSpace WebStaged Performance Art TV.
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The Dharma Beauty Pageant is the fourth installment of Dharma Broads performance art series, originally commissioned by Robert Trammell and WordSpace in 2004. Dallas theater critic, Jerome Weeks, described the performance art group as “neo-beat, hippie Happening.”
Dharma Broads IV: The Dharma Beauty Pageant
Due to the pandemic, Dharma Beauty Pageant. originally scheduled for January, has been re-imagined as a series of video trailers to the upcoming staged version. The videos are first-person, documentary performances. The artists for The Dharma (or-Truth) and Beauty Pageant (or procession) interlace or collide on the elusive, sometimes conflicting, definitions for those words. Is truth, beauty? And vice versa?
The virtual cast includes Monika Bell, Linda Jones, Karen Minzer, Brenda Randall, Carolina Reyes, Micaela Tillett, and Laney Yarber. The selections were made by original DB producer, Karen X Minzer. With the exception of two cast members, the individual performers all created new work for the production. Additional performers are credited within each video. Please see credits for each video. Individual links serve as a printed program. All copyrights are reserved by the individual artists; and are held on their individual platforms.
Since the performers cannot hear your applause, boos, or questions, we hope you will all participate by clicking on the Comment section below and Comment links following the individual videos.
In the tradition of previous Dharma Broad productions, an audience-participation exercise is included: Carolina Reyes offers her video as an ekphrastic writing contest. Click here for Submission Details. There are 3 cash prizes.
The Dharma Beauty Pageant will run through February. Following the event, WordSpace Performance Art TV will continue to present performances projects of both new and archival material that represent our interdisciplinary arts legacy. Stay tuned!
Special thanks to The Great Fred Curchack for the inspiration drawn from his work; and for his generous mentorship of The Dharma Beauty Pageant.
The Dharma Beauty Pageant was commissioned by WordSpace; and made possible, with partial funding from the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture; and Moody Fund for the Arts.
Click here to read more on past Dharma Broad Productions.
2020 Pandemic: Om Mani Padme Om.
Walter Mosley @ Arts and Letters Live
Virtual Event: Walter Mosley
Monday, February 8, 7:00 p.m.
Recording available through February 22 Promotional Partner: Wordspace
Live virtual event
Walter Mosley‘s infamous detective Easy Rawlins is back, with a new mystery to solve on the sun-soaked streets of Southern California. Ezekiel “Easy” Porterhouse Rawlins is an unlicensed private investigator turned hard-boiled detective who is always willing to do what it takes to get things done in the racially charged, dark underbelly of Los Angeles. But when Easy is approached by a shell-shocked Vietnam War veteran—a young white man who claims to have gotten into a fight protecting a White woman from a Black man—he knows he shouldn’t take the case. Though he sees nothing but trouble in the brooding ex-soldier’s eyes, Easy, a vet himself, feels a kinship form between them. Easy embarks on an investigation that takes him from mountaintops to the desert, through South Central and into the homes of the fabulously wealthy, facing hippies, the mob, and old friends perhaps more dangerous than anyone else. Set against the social and political upheaval of the late 1960s, Blood Grove is ultimately a story about survival, not only of the body but also of the soul.
Winner of the 2020 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated and beloved writers. Widely hailed as “incomparable” (Chicago Tribune) and “dazzling” (Tampa Bay Times), he has won numerous awards, including a Grammy, a PEN USA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and several NAACP Image Awards.
“A new Easy Rawlins novel is always big news in crime-fiction circles, and this fifteenth entry in the series does not disappoint.” —Booklist
TICKET PRICES
Virtual ticket + book with signed bookplate shipped directly to your home:
Public: $40
DMA Member/Educator/Student: $38
Vitual ticket only:
Public: $12
DMA Member/Educator/Student: $10
A Natural Progression | Linda Jones
“I am a writing coach, journalist, healing arts and grief recovery consultant, Black culture activist, artist and the (now) bald-headed founder of a collective that celebrates nappy hair! Through my consultancy The Writing Doula, I create content, edit, and help people give birth to the power of their words. I also conduct writing workshops that focus on telling life stories, preserving legacy, developing emotional intelligence, navigating grief and trauma and practicing self-care. I am an author and a self-proclaimed ‘spoken notes’ artist –who others mistake for poet. I love African drumming and have been able to hold my own at pre-COVID ceremonies and drum circles, playing my trusty doundouns.”
Click here for interview on Positively Joy podcast.
Linda has worked for a number of daily newspapers , including the Dallas Morning News, Detroit News and Sun-Sentinel (in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.) as a features and general news reporter. She has done freelance work for The Daily Beast, People, Essence, Agence France Press, AOL News and a variety of print and online publications.
She is author of It’s Only Temporary … Journal for Surviving Loved Ones, Family Scribes: Writing Memories for Your Family Tree! and Nappyisms: Affirmations for Nappy-headed People and Wannabes! An essay from her book was selected to appear in Chicken Soup for the African American Woman’s Soul.
Linda has received feature-writing awards from The Writer’s Block, the National Association of Black Journalists, the Association for Women Journalists, Florida Medical Association, Society for Features Journalism, NAACP and others.
Shit Show Holiday Open Gallery
| Shit Show Holiday Open GalleryWhat: Group Exhibit When: December 19, 6-9 pm Where: Mighty Fine Arts, 409A N. Tyler St., 75208Featuring very affordable pieces by Brett Ardoin, Jason Cohen, Katherine Lilly, Dwayne Carter, Cynthia Ann Miro, Sharon Neel Bagley, Matt Bagley, Susan Duval, Andy Don Emmons, Teresa Megahan, Dan Oliver and Manuel Pecina. ALL COVID PROTOCOL WILL BE OBSERVED! MASKS REQUIRED! |
Claire Lane
Laney Yarber is an award winning Performance Artist from Dallas. This work was created as a presentation curated by faculty for the Guadalajara Tech Institute.
Carolina Reyes__Areola Eyes
Carolina Reyes is visual and performance artist from NYC.
Ekphrastic Writing Contest
$1 Submission fee.
$100 1st prize, $50 2nd prize, $25 3rd.
Submit through Submittable. Link will be up soon.
Contact WordSpace if you don’t have a bank account to enter through submittable.
$1 Submission fee.
Got Ojas?
Ojas is the juiciness of life, made possible by mental, emotion, physical and spiritual balance. Think about the qualities of a person who is healthy. They are strong yet supple, easy to smile, generous with their time and energy, resilient and a visible radiance. The Sanskrit word ojas describes this glow. This video is a first person documentary, free associatively constructed around a poem by Karen Minzer. The video explores the relationship of Ojas and its parallels in zen and socratic philosophies, referring to essential nature residing within us. What’s inside of you is outside of you. And vice versa. This video defines ojas and essential nature through home movies of three generations of the same family. Audio of Minzer’s poem is similarly layered to suggest generational overtones. The video incorporates iPhone call-in readings by Karen Minzer, Monika Bell and Imogene Bell. Visuals were collaged by Monika Bell, using Karen’s family videos, some clips from both Monika and Karen’s performances, Suze Riddle’s ambient film work, and audio of Karen defining Ojas in an interview by Brian Townley. Music is public domain.
Text:
Got Ojas?
Holey Chirping of a bird that loves it when the sun comes up
A flower that loves it when it rains, and not too much
the colors that love any kind of light
the wood that loves the ancestry of the tree
the tree that casts a dance of leaves
to have kin so near
though a park bench it may now be
the bed that loves your sleep
the water that loves your drink
the people that let you watch them
the people that watch you
what you imagine you share in a stare
the spoon that loves to stir
the book that loves it pages
and holds them tight in its arms
the spirits of the Dead
did love die when they did?
Holy the truth that loves to surface
the journeys that love us to pieces
the pieces apart
attracted to a whole
or picked up piecemeal
loved individually
the splinters of the self
divided, multiplied physically altered
but never wavering in the soul’s composition
the composition that loves your soul
the soul that loves you
the you that loves them
the Them that is You
the All that is the It
the Them with You
The All is nothing more
than nothingness plus
all deathlessness, birthlessness
living, dead, and in-between.
the shining of nothing in a hole
the hair that grows down a river
the river that perches on a tree
the tree made of a tv
the tv that is nature
the nature that is the furniture
` the silence that speaks
the ceiling that rains thought
a floor’s cradle of the heart
the walls that cheat the feet
Start to finish
Finish to be started
the in-between bleeding into
opposite attractions— All of it!
the eye of the daisy staring
at the face of the chair
the choir of voicelessness
the danceless rhythm
the un-seeable obvious
the oblivion of the known
refusing and accepting
everything
simultaneously!
Vacuum the rain
Publish the sun
Fax the clouds
Pressure a void
You can be loved
by millions of people
a spaceless of people
Unless you love yourself
You will never feel their love
It’s not all or nothing.
It’s everything that’s nothing
Be the problem and its solution
Be as empty as you are full
Be a dimensional plane
Be dimensionless
Be aimlessly passionate
Be passionately aimless
Lose the answer
Find the question
Dawn is never wrong!
Nobel worm awaken!
A red-breasted robin
pecks the earth for you!
Karen is a writer/poet/wanderer, published by the Austin Sun in the 70s, Paris Records in the 80s and Wowapi, 90s to present. Her most recent work is published in Entropy (2019.) In 1977 she discovered WordSpace founder, Robert Trammell, reading his poetry at Old City Park across the street from her home at the historic (grundgy) Ambassador Hotel. She is a co-recipient, with Dee Mitchell, of the 2015 Dallas Observer MasterMind Awards and has served WordSpace as program curator, coordinator, board member, programs chair, program director, and executive director 2009-2018. She is currently a WordSpace Advisor and co-chair of Special Events; and Humanities doctoral (old) student. She holds an MFA from Naropa University Jack Kerouac School, where she also studied as a poetics apprentice to Allen Ginsberg, back in the day. She has curated thousands of writers for over 30 years in DFW, Boulder and Santa Fe. Karen is a veteran punk band shouter, but is pretty quiet and retired these days, a Dharma Broad, 500 hour E-RYT yoga instructor; and sometimes participates in Thomas Riccio’s Zombies. Jennifer Smart: Dallas Observer. 100 Dallas Creatives: Underground Culture Mainstay Karen X. Minzer
