The International Virginia Woolf Society is issuing a call for proposals for the Virginia Woolf panel at the 2013 Modern Language Association Conference in Boston Jan. 3-6.
The proposal garnering the most votes from the IVWS will be part of the 2013 MLA conference program. The runner-up will be submitted by the IVWS to the MLA as a second panel, which MLA may or may not approve. IVWS voting on the proposals will be completed in November, so as to meet MLA deadlines. A call will then go out to the society for papers to be submitted for the panels.
A panel proposal should include:
A 35 word description (word count includes title)
The name(s) and contact information of the proposed organizer(s).
Submit to Georgia Johnston by email at IVWSociety@gmail.com or U.S. mail at Georgia Johnston, Department of English, Adorjan 127
Saint Louis University, 3800 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108.
Electronic submission is strongly preferred. Email submissions should have Woolf MLA 2013 in the subject line.
Deadline: Monday, Oct.31, 2011, for the receipt of panel proposals.
To propose your own special session outside of the IVWS process, please visit the MLA website.
In some ways, Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway is about voices. Voices from the past. Voices from the present. Voices of the novel’s main characters. Voices of those passing by. Voices of war and voices of peace. Sometimes the voices seem to drift. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they warm you. Sometimes they stop you cold.
I was in the front row at last Saturday’s show. And like others who have reviewed the play written by Ellen Mclaughlin, I found myself overwhelmed by the power of Woolf’s words, the way they transformed the stage, and the way the stage adaptation made them ever more luminous and lyrical.
The starkly simple set features a mottled blue floor and wall with the words “Fear no more.”
Like many readers of Woolf, I have read her 1925 stream of consciousness novel multiple times and have written about it as well. So I wouldn’t have thought that a staged adaptation of the novel could keep me spellbound, could make me wonder what might happen next, could bowl me over with its emotional power. But that’s exactly what this production did.
Others have already done an excellent job of reviewing Septimus and Clarissa, commenting on its superb acting; its excellent blend of music, ambient sound and dialogue; its relevant anti-war message; and the way it captures the spirit and meaning of Woolf’s novel.
So I will do something a bit different here. I will talk about how another group of voices — the many voices of the performers, directors, writer and crew — shaped what appeared on the Baruch stage this fall.
The after-show conversation
I learned a bit about the shaping process at an after-show conversation held on stage Saturday evening. It was headlined by best-selling author and Barnard professor of English Mary Gordon. She settled in on stage with Rachel Dickstein, director; McLaughlin, who wrote the script and played the title character; Tommy Schrider, who played Septimus; and Miriam Silverman, who played both Lucrezia and Elizabeth Dalloway.
Mary Gordon, Rachel Dickstein and Ellen Mclaughlin
The shaping process was a long one that involved multiple workshops, with each workshop adding or subtracting things from the production up until the play’s formal opening in September. And everyone involved played a part that went beyond the one acknowledged in the formal program.
The actors, for example, helped work out the choreographed movements they make while voicing Woolf’s lyrical words in song, choreography that changed as the play progressed.
They also collaborated on the set design. When Dickstein brought a batch of large rectangular frames to the set, thinking they might add something interesting to the production, the actors experimented with them until they worked. And in the final production, three of the frames are moved around on stage, almost like dancing partners, to represent a changing array of doors and windows, with people going out and through and around them.
The idea for the moveable staircase itself, the most prominent element in the set design, came from Dickstein and set designer Susan Zeeman Rogers, but the actors suggested ways of using it, as well as other set pieces and props. Actor Schrider, a Septimus of power and emotional force, did improvisations on another staircase before the large black metal staircase became a part of the final set design. The large black metal staircase is a focal point throughout the play, as it serves as a platform for Mrs. Dalloway as hostess and both a battlefield and suicide site for Septimus.
Miriam Silverman and Tommy Schrider among the rose petals that drift over guests during the party scene
The significance of a house within a house
Also on the simply set, stark stage throughout the play are three white wooden houses about four feet high. They are rolled around the set on wheels to symbolize Clarissa’s country home of Bruton as well as the homes she and other characters see along the streets of London.
But one of the three is special, and here is where director Dickstein gives voice to her child self. She recalled encountering an elaborately detailed furnished dollhouse as a young girl, one that she could never afford. It was a memory and an image that stuck in her mind, and she asked set designer Zeeman Rogers to create a more modest version of such a house — Clarissa’s London house — for the play.
The Clarissa Dalloway dollhouse
The interior of this lit-up house, complete with the novel’s characters as free-standing paper dolls, is revealed during the scene that recreates Clarissa’s party. The symbolism of the dollhouse opening up to reveal its interior to the audience just as Clarissa opens her home to her guests has a certain magical charm with subtle but significant meaning.
The title resounded – “Song of Lunch” – I couldn’t remember what or where I’d heard about it, so I Googled and found that it’s a poem by Christopher Reid that was adapted by the BBC and shown on British television last October.
“Virginia Woolf lurking off to the library”
Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson are former lovers who meet for lunch after 15 years. It’s mostly his voiceover – the poetic narrative – and just a little conversation. I could drown in Alan Rickman’s voice as happily as in a vat of dark chocolate, how about you?
I watched two online clips – more than a teaser but far short of the full portion. You will find the first one here. I was delighted to find that Woolf pops up near the beginning. As the man leaves the publishing house, where he works, he strolls through “Bloomsbury and its blue plaques,” “leafy literary land” (I adore the alluring alliteration). With a little imagination, he says, you can see “Virginia Woolf lurking off to the library with a trug full of books” and “T.S. Eliot bound for his first martini of the day.”
It appears that the ending is available online too, but a sizable middle chunk seems to have been held back. I’m hooked and dangling, but I don’t want to jump ahead and miss anything, so I’ll wait for the PBS airing here, Nov. 13 on Masterpiece.
Woolf has gone global again, with Woolf sightings from Iran to Ireland to Cyprus to Minneapolis. But the not-so-big story reported by at least five media outlets last week (numbers one through five below) is that actress Annette Bening will read Mrs. Dalloway and Nicole Kidman To the Lighthouse for upcoming Audible recordings. Woolf is the only writer to garner two audio reads.
Hollywood A-Listers reading for Audible.com series, TheCelebrityCafe.com
The Hollywood Reporter wrote the celebrities will be recording well-known books such as Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There. Kate Winslet was the first to record a book. …
Stars Will Read Amazon Unit’s New Audio Book Series, New York Times (blog) … Watts (“Summer,” by Edith Wharton), Dustin Hoffman (“Being There,” by Jerzy Kosinski), Annette Bening (“Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf), Samuel L. Jackson (“A Rage in Harlem,” by Chester Himes) and Kim Basinger (“The Awakening,” by Kate Chopin). …
Famous People Will Read Famous Books for You, New York Magazine
Celebrities interested in helping the public become more literate include Nicole Kidman, who will record Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Colin Firth (Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair), Susan Sarandon (Carson McCullers’s The Member of the …
Inside the mind of Mulk Raj Anand, Daily Pioneer
Comparing the lengths of the average sentence in the individual compositions of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf who are his contemporaries, Waley goes on to muse that the Industrial Revolution has transformed literature, …
Christians should embrace shared faith, Herald Sun
ENGLISH author and feminist Virginia Woolf wondered about the lack of empathy between some people. Why are we so hard on each other, she asked, when life is so difficult for all of us and when, in the end, we value the same things? Ms Woolf came to …
An England that exists just outside living memory, Sunday Times.lk
Vita Sackville-West is famous as the author of ‘The Edwardians’, the one time lover of Virginia Woolf and the gardener responsible for the exquisite beauty of the grounds at Sissinghurst in Kent, England. Vita created the latter with her husband, …
Novelist Jayne Joso finds freedom of thought in the Welsh landscape, WalesOnline
I read in Virginia Woolf’s diaries recently how she found that the activity of diary writing had greatly helped her style and “loosened the ligatures”, which puts it perfectly. It also reminds me of a documentary I once saw in which AS Byatt explained …
Malcolm Lazin on LGBT History Month 2011, OUTTAKE VOICES (blog) … McMillen – Activist, Ryan Murphy – Writer/Director, Dan Savage – Journalist, Amanda Simpson – Government Official, Wanda Sykes – Comedian, Lilli Vincenz – Gay Pioneer, Virginia Woolf – Author and Pedro Zamora – AIDS Activist & MTV Personality. …
Book Review: Virginia Woolf by Alexandra Harris, California Literary Review
by Ed Voves by Alexandra Harris On a sunny September morning during the late 1930′s, Virginia Woolf sat writing in her county home, Monk’s House, in Sussex. Looking up from her work, Woolf noticed a moth fluttering from one corner of the window to the …
Iranians to enjoy Woolf’s Moments of Being, Iran Book News Agency
“A Sketch of the Past”, an autobiography of Virginia Woolf published in “Moments of Being”, is converted into Persian by Majid Eslami. IBNA: “A Sketch of the Past” is the name of an autobiographical article penned by Virginia Woolf that was …
Instead of a Book by Diana Athill, The Guardian
She does not have much time for Virginia Woolf, but she describes here what Woolf might call “moments of being” and bears witness to the fact that such moments can be as powerful at 90 as at 19. Does Field, I wonder, feel the same? …
Oh, a Happy Life if Back in Moscow, New York Times
Last fall, Classic Stage Company in New York presented her pitch-perfect 2003 re-creation of Virginia Woolf’s novel “Orlando.” Now she has tackled “Three Sisters,” Anton Chekhov’s 110-year-old drama about young women in the provinces with big-city …
TS Eliot’s Rattle of Miseries, New York Times
Among the literary figures, the most impressive were Pound; Virginia Woolf, whose viperish tongue was more lethal than any poison of the Borgias (she found Eliot “peevish, plaintive, egotistical,” with a “sepulchral voice”); and Bertrand Russell, …
Lost in France: The Lutyens jewel that nobody wants, The Independent
Over the next month, an ambitious plan will be announced to try to preserve the site – which has connections with writers, artists and musicians from Marcel Proust to Virginia Woolf, Joan Miró and Claude Debussy – as a Franco-British cultural centre. …
The extraordinary gentlemen’s latest, Livemint
Then there are the constant characters, Wilhel“mina” Harker from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Allan Quatermain from H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, and Orlando (probably from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando). Throw in pop references, such as Harry Potter, …
Joan Didion: Stepping into the River Styx, Again, Publishers Weekly
“A couple of years ago… a movie… did you happen to see it… about Virginia Woolf?” (The movie is The Hours, adapted from the book of the same name by Michael Cunningham.) “Just the part where she was in the water was stuck in my mind. …
NinetoFive Music News, Nine to Five Virginia Woolf creeps into it…Frieda Kahlo, whose painfully beautiful painting gave me the title.” Haunting and optimistic single Shake It Out is worth a listen. For a sneak peak on her sophomore album, watch exclusive studio footage and preview music …
How to write the new biography, The Guardian
Peter Parker, biographer of JR Ackerley, will discuss Ackerley’s My Dog Tulip, followed by a consideration of animals in biography and autobiography and autobiographies by animals, including Virginia Woolf’s Flush, James Lever’s Me, Cheeta, …
Jane Urquhart inspired by visual imagination, The Telegram
Books Urquhart plans to reference include Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Last September,” Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando,” as well as poetry by Brendan Kinelly. Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” will also be referenced, since Urquhart feels it’s a particularly …
Get the inside scoop, Kingsburg Recorder
The senior’s interests range from playing golf to watching a supernatural TV series about a werewolf to reading Virginia Woolf. The 17-year-old’s college plans, and she says this could change, are to attend California State University, …
A Room With Some Views, The Link
I had written down the same before, but then we both thought about Virginia Woolf, and then came the question “Were you inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Waves?” Then came a question from one of her students—something to the effect of whether certain parts …
Imagining HG Wells’ sex life, Salon
“A Man of Parts” opens in blitzed London in the spring of 1944, when Wells, nearly 78, diagnosed with liver cancer and eclipsed by modernists like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, retreats into his own head to review his life. Lodge writes, “The mind is …
Ray Robertson: Regardless of form, National Post (blog)
Additionally, I’ve always admired writers, like Virginia Woolf, who were equally comfortable working in fictional and non-fictional genres. And good writing is, after all, good writing, regardless of the form it takes. And as for who my intended reader …
Festival shines a light on Virginia Woolf, Cambridge Network
A Cambridge festival draws attention to the work of Virginia Woolf – and uses her work as a creative focus. What started as a conversation over a bottle of wine a couple of years ago has resulted in a festival for readers and writers celebrating the …
Sheer brilliance at Perth Fashion Festival, WA today
Taking inspirational cues from the Modernist era, one could imagine Virginia Woolf herself adopting these looks for their free form shapes and strong colours that stir melancholy. Zhivago came out to play for the first time to launch a glamourous …
The Sparkler of Albion: The Many Faces of Charles Dickens, Telegraph.co.uk
As Virginia Woolf pointed out in Orlando, “a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many thousand”. Few people lead as many lives as Dickens, who enjoyed coining extra nicknames …
As a manner of fact…, gair rhydd
As Virginia Woolf quite rightly put it: “I should remind you how much depends on you, and what an influence you can exert upon the future”. Let the future be full of gentlemen and a place where women re-discover their self respect.
BIOGRAPHY REVIEW: “Virginia Woolf“, Minneapolis Star Tribune
If she intends to write fiction, Virginia Woolf proclaimed in 1929, “a woman must have money and a room of her own.” Woolf had both. And she made the most of them. One of the great modernists of the 20th century, she produced more than a dozen books, …
Mulkraj Anand in gripping conversations, Organiser
He got introduced to the celebrated writers of the time, including such eminent names as TS Eliot, Virginia Woolf, EM Foster and Aldous Huxley. Most of the writers of the time belonged to what came to be known as Bloomsbury Group. …
Read any good Montaigne essays lately?, Dayton Daily News … von Goethe’s “Faust,” Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” and Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse.” Of course, adults have been lamenting the lack of reading by teenagers since Virgil was in junior high. …
What I’m wearing: Brogues, Telegraph.co.uk
If you like a studious Virginia Woolf look then Bob’s your uncle, but if your ankles are on the stolid side, it’s best to stick to wearing trousers with your brogues. And if you’re pitching for something vampy, the brogue’s not really a goer. …
Aysha Taryam: Don’t be afraid to say the F-word, Gulf Today
Women thinkers, philosophers and activists like Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir and Sylvia Plath have written extensively on the subject of women’s rights believing that only a woman can truly portray the struggle of her race. Books like Woolf’s A …
Theatre of the mind, Cyprus Mail
For this project, Lea assembled the Persona theatre group, a cast of friends (theatre specialists) who had appeared together in a 2003 production of Orlando by Virginia Woolf. The group has also performed co-productions with theatre companies in the UK …
Hermione Lee to share biographer’s secrets, Irish Times
Hermione Lee, a veteran in the field, biographer of Virginia Woolf and Edith Wharton, will speak on all this – and share details of the tactics needed to write something masterful – when she speaks in Dublin next month. Lee has also written lives of …
A little corner of England in France, BBC News
For the first 25 years of its existence, Le Bois des Moutiers was the centre of an intimate and highly distinguished arts scene, with other visitors including writers Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf and painter Pablo Picasso. …
Three adoptions in the family, The Guardian Virginia Woolf said that we think back through our mothers if we are women – and I do. That female line also embraces Annie and Eva, and puts them at the heart of my story. How could it not? They are my people; the people I grew up with. …
Why I Love Hemingway (and Why I Write), Wired News
When I was 18, Virginia Woolf * stirred in me the desire to write. Hemingway made that desire last. For that I will always love him. Hemingway’s Boat [the book under review] is a book written with the virtuosity of a novelist, hagiographic in the right …
Stars with multiple roles in the Oscar race, GoldDerby
Though she lost her Best Actress bid to Halle Berry (“Monster’s Ball”), Kidman won the following year for playing author Virginia Woolf in “The Hours.” Billy Bob Thornton, 2001: For a while, it seemed like his stronger film was the Coen Brothers’ …
Flashback Five – Nicole Kidman’s Best Movies, AMCtv.com (blog)
Well, it’s not exactly disproved by this critically acclaimed drama, for which Kidman took home Best Actress as a dowdy Virginia Woolf. But even without the prosthetic nose, Kidman’s performance as the novelist is still transformative. …
This week we were, Irish Times
Listening to a letter from TS Eliot to Virginia Woolf in the Paris Review, ahead of the publication this month of The Letters of TS Eliot . In it he describes being “boiled in a hell-broth” leaving his mother off in Liverpool to take a transatlantic …
Amy: She’s exhausted being editor for husband, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Some spouses can write and edit together, but with the exception of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, these two roles don’t always mix well. Your adoring accolades will mean nothing if you are not honest. Without honesty, the empty praise will bring on more …
