Wild Geese Players of Seattle

posted
Apr 15, 2014

The Other Bloomsday - Seattle 2014

Telypso

The Wild Geese Players of Seattle will present a staged reading of Chapter 1, “Telemachus”, and Chapter 4, “Calypso”, adapted from the 1922 edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, on 2pm on Sunday, June 15th, 2014, at The Seattle Central Library 1000 Fourth Ave, Seattle, WA 98104 Map. Donations towards costs of posters and props are welcome.

Our annual Bloomsday readings started in 1998 and last year we concluded Ulysses with the “Penelope” chapter. We’re starting afresh this year, with the chapters that introduce the two primary characters of the book, Stephen Dedalus in Chapter 1, “Telemachus”, and Leopold Bloom in Chapter 4, “Calypso”.

Audio Recording

The Seattle Library recorded our reading.

Chapter 1: Telemachus

“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead”—one of the most famous opening lines in English literature. It’s 8am on June 16th, 1904: a fine summer’s day in Dublin. Stephen Dedalus is temporarily staying with Buck Mulligan and an Englishman at a Martello Tower south of Dublin. Stephen is the brilliant aesthete who was the subject of James Joyce’s previous novel, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He is at odds with his irreverent host, who mocks him; by the end of the chapter, he will set forth across Dublin, never to return to the Tower.

Chapter 4: Calypso

Meanwhile, Leopold Bloom is starting his day at his home at 7 Eccles Street in Dublin’s city center. Bloom, in contrast to Stephen, is a perfectly ordinary fellow. For now, he concerns himself with preparing breakfast for his wife, Molly, and worrying about her lover and about their absent daughter, Milly. We’ll see deep into Bloom’s head and heart over the course of this day and this book.

Reading at the Seattle Central Library

The reading will be held in the Seattle Central Library at Level 4, Room 2 — Howard S. Wright Family & Janet W. Ketcham Meeting Room. Please arrive before 2pm to find a seat. The reading will take roughly 100 minutes.

Poster

We encourage you to download Ellen Coyle’s Telemachus + Calypso poster (PDF, 1.7MB) and post it around town.

Press Release

This is our seventeenth year of Bloomsday readings. (Press Release).

Commentary

Telemachus (Chapter 1)

Calypso (Chapter 4)

Miscellaneous

Other Events

See our archives for details of our previous readings.

posted at 12:00  · 
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posted
Apr 15, 2014

2014 Bloomsday Press Release

The Other Bloomsday 2014 - Press Release

The Wild Geese Players of Seattle will present a staged reading of Chapter 1, “Telemachus”, and Chapter 4, “Calypso”, adapted from the 1922 edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, on 2pm on Sunday, June 15th, 2014, at The Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave, Seattle, WA 98104 Map. Donations towards costs of posters and props are welcome.

Each year, the Wild Geese Players stage a public reading to commemorate this classic novel, which takes place entirely on June 16, 1904, also known as Bloomsday. The readings started in 1998, and we have now completed the entire novel, last year reaching the climax with the concluding chapter - Molly Bloom’s soliloquy.

This year, the cycle begins again. We’ll be reading the 1st and 4th chapters (known as Telemachus and Calypso), which are concurrent in the novel. We’ll begin with a brief introduction and explanation of the analogs to Homer’s Odyssey. While Ulysses is famously controversial, difficult and lengthy, we’ve great success offering it in small, more easily digested bites.

The Wild Geese Players stage readings of Irish literature, by writers such as James Joyce and W.B. Yeats, throughout the Seattle area. We are a diverse group of people with an interest in Irish literature, and most of us are either Irish-born or have Irish connections. More generally, the Wild Geese refers to the Irish diaspora, after the original Wild Geese, exiled Irish soldiers and their descendants who served in European armies in the 16th–18th centuries.

The reading is expected to take about 100 minutes.

Contact: www.WildGeeseSeattle.org | WildGeeseSeattle@gmail.com

posted at 10:00  · 
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