Bloomsday — Seattle 2019

The Wild Geese Players of Seattle will present a staged reading of Chapter 10, “Wandering Rocks”, adapted from the 1922 edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

We have read from Ulysses every Bloomsday since 1998. After concluding Ulysses in 2013, we started afresh five years ago. This year, we’re reading Chapter 10, “Wandering Rocks”.

We’ll be reading excerpts from the chapter at Folio on Friday, June 14th, and the entire chapter at the Seattle Central Library on Sunday, June 16th.

Chapter 10: Wandering Rocks

The Wandering Rocks chapter is the only chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses with a brief, passing structural relationship to Homer. In Homer, Circe warns Ulysses to avoid the Wandering Rocks because they were dangerous for sea navigation. It is really taken from Jason and the Argonauts’ story of their perilous sea journey back to Corinth with the Golden Fleece.

Joyce was reputed to have used a compass, ruler, set square, map, and a timepiece when he was constructing this episode. Here we are first fully introduced to the Dublin of the early twentieth century, a city that the book would eventually immortalize. Neither Stephen Dedalus nor Leopold Bloom dominates the chapter. It is Joyce’s “woman-city”—Dublin—that becomes the essence of the story.

This is the central chapter of Joyce’s book, offered in 19 scenes, with the first functioning as a classic prologue and the nineteenth as an epilogue. The Wandering Rocks serves as a bridge between the two halves of the book and a miniature of the whole.

In true Joyce style, he used to play a board game called Labyrinth with his daughter Lucia. What we are witnessing is that labyrinth transported to the streets of Dublin. The characters of the city pass the mid-afternoon hour of 3–4pm. Their comings and goings become framed between the primary journeys of Church and State. The ambling Father Conmee represents the Roman Catholic Church, and the cavalcade of the Governor-General of Ireland, the Earl of Dudley, represents the British State. The chapter is quite cinematic in its visual presentation. Its conclusion is a city crowded with people walking, talking, running and singing!

6:00–8:00pm on Friday, June 14th, 2019,
Folio Seattle,
93 Pike St #307,
Seattle, WA 98101

Directions to Folio in the Pike Place Market.

Folio Seattle presents a talk about Joyce and Ulysses by Roger Berger and the Wild Geese reading excerpts from the “Wandering Rocks” chapter.

Please RSVP to the Facebook event.

2:00–4:00pm on Sunday, June 16th, 2019,
The Seattle Central Library,
Microsoft Auditorium, Level 1,
1000 Fourth Ave,
Seattle, WA 98104

Map.

We will read the entire “Wandering Rocks” chapter at the Library.

Donations towards costs of posters and props are welcome. Please arrive before 2:00pm to find a seat. The reading will take about two hours.

Please RSVP to the Facebook event.

Poster

We encourage you to download Irene Calvo’s Wandering Rocks poster (PDF, 600KB) and post it around town.

Press Release

This is our twenty-second year of Bloomsday readings. (Press Release).

Commentary on Wandering Rocks

• Text of Chapter 10
• The Joyce Project: Wandering Rocks
• Ulysses Guide
• Kennesaw Guide
• Cliff Notes
• Sparknotes
• The Joyce Portal
• The Sheila Variations
• Joyce Images
• Paul Debraski
• Shmoop Summary and Analysis
• Groden Notes
• Joyce’s Moraculous Sindbook: Suzette Henke — “Hades”: The Hibernian Underworld, “Aelous” and “Wandering Rocks”: The World as Machine
• The Modern Word
• James Joyce’s Ulysses: Where It’s Always June 16, 1904 and Wandering Rocks II
• RTÉ 25-hour broadcast of Ulysses (history)

Other Wild Geese Events

See our archives for details of our previous readings.

2019 Bloomsday Press Release

22nd Annual Staged Reading / Bloomsday Celebration of James Joyce’s Ulysses

The Wild Geese Players of Seattle join Bloomsday celebrations across the globe honoring Ulysses’ author James Joyce. Our 22nd annual staged reading of a chapter from the book will be held on Bloomsday, Sunday, June 16th at 2:00pm in the Microsoft Auditorium at the Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave, Seattle, WA 98104. We will also be reading excerpts at 6:00pm on Friday, June 14th, at Folio Seattle, 93 Pike St #307, Seattle, WA 98101.

Bloomsday (Bloom’s day, named for Ulysses’ main character, Leopold Bloom) is a worldwide commemoration and celebration of the life of Irish writer, James Joyce and refers to the 24-hour period of 16th June 1904 in which Ulysses is set. The book follows the wanderings of Bloom, a Jewish everyman, and Stephen Dedalus, a young writer and Joyce’s alter ego, as they wander the streets of Dublin.

Chapter 10: Wandering Rocks

Chapter 10, The Wandering Rocks, will be performed. This chapter has been described as a labyrinth that summarizes the day so far, and gives premonitions of the tale to come! This is the central chapter of Joyce’s book, offered in 19 interlocking scenes, as ordinary Dubliners across the city interact in mid-afternoon.

More Information

Visit the Wild Geese Players’ website www.WildGeeseSeattle.org, like our Facebook group, or follow @WildGeeseSea on Twitter.

Follow-up contacts:
George Reilly, Director,  WildGeeseSeattle@gmail.com
Iain Edgewater, i.edgewater@gmail.com, 206.693.8166

Irish Week Reading of Irish Literature

As part of Seattle’s Irish Week, the Wild Geese Players will be reading an hour-long selection of Irish literature from the likes of James Joyce, Flann O’Brien, W.B. Yeats, Roddy Doyle, Dervla Murphy, Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker, and Seamus Heaney. Our reading is part of the weekend-long Irish Festival at the Seattle Center Armory. Join us in the Upper Level from 2–3pm on Sunday, March 17th, 2019.

RSVP at the Facebook event.

Recap: 20th Anniversary Reading

Thanks to all the people who came out to the Couth Buzzard this afternoon to hear us read from Joyce, Yeats, Roddy Doyle, Dervla Murphy, Eavan Boland, and many more for our 20th anniversary reading.

Join our announcements list to be notified of our next reading.