Roaming on March 8

by Karen Krolak

This will be brief as it is almost time to set my clock forward and I have a 12 hour rehearsal for Coriolanus (lovely article in the Boston Globe about it on Friday) awaiting me in the morning. Sitting in the castle shaped Amory building on this surprisingly warm afternoon listening to all the references to Rome in the play today, I savored memories of wandering around the city exactly a year ago.

Echoes of the man playing his saxophone standing in a cardboard box on an ancient bridge at dusk (one of the sound clips that I wove into the soundscape for Pochemuchka, one of Monkeyhouse's First Night premieres) snuck into my mind several times.

I was on my way to Simone Forti's Logomotion workshop in Orvieto and spent two glorious days meandering about Rome alone without any agenda. Setting off each afternoon from the magnificent Maria-Rosa Guesthouse overflowing with suggestions from Sylvie, I found plenty of adventure and several secret nooks. (It also fueled the idea for my pedestrian project in Somerville.)

It was fantastic precursor to the incredible creative sparks generated by my time in Orvieto surrounded by an exhilarating group of women from all over the world. Simone seemed to know how to unleash the appetite for artistic boldness in each of us. Working in Italian, English, French, Croatian, Greek, Turkish, German, and what ever other languages seemed useful, we investigated unexpected intersections in our lives. The somewhat surreal, tromp d'oeuil landscape on the walls the former castle provided an exquisite backdrop for our daily improvisations.

As a group, we all agreed that we should try to develop ways to continue creating projects together after we returned to our homes. Many of us have kept in touch or visited each other since we dispersed after our ending performance in Rome. So this year, we decided to explore a structure where each of us would devise an 8-minute solo wherever we were and find a way to share it with each other. I am so excited to see what develops that I am still up typing.