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Posts Tagged ‘Freshwater’

Woolf Arts Archive holds first major public event

Posted in art, events, Freshwater, play, Turkey, tagged , , on Thursday 3 April 2025| Leave a Comment »

The Woolf Arts Archive, a global project devoted to the collection and appreciation of art inspired by the life and works of Virginia Woolf, held its inaugural major public event.

Panelists at the Woolf Arts Archives symposium

Titled “Following an Author’s Trail: Virginia Woolf, the Woolf Arts Archive and Freshwater: A Comedy” symposium, the event was held March 6 in Ankara, Turkey.

About the symposium

The event brought together scholars, artists, and theatre practitioners to explore Woolf’s enduring influence across different art forms.

It featured a rich exchange of ideas with numerous talks addressing themes also relevant to International Women’s Day.

The sessions ranged from the Woolf Arts Archive’s creative role to Woolf’s artistic and cultural legacy, including her female characters and the afterlife of her works. A highlight of the symposium was the Woolf Arts Archive’s performance of the third staged reading of Freshwater in Turkish.

Featured talks

  • “Following an Author’s Trail: Virginia Woolf and Woolf Arts Archive” by Prof. Dr.
    Mine Özyurt Kılıç.
  • “A Shell of Many Layers: Woolf Arts Archive and the Snail’s Journey” by Atahan
    Mahir Karabiber.
  • “From Drops to Waves: Woolf Arts Archive as a Basin” by Tuğba Çanakçı.
  • “Dimbola Lodge as a Precursor to the Bloomsbury Group” by Nidanur Yıldırım.
  • “Flawed Eyes and Faces Behind the Visible: Julia Margaret Cameron, Diane Arbus, Vivian Maier and; Cindy Sherman” by Independent Artist/Curator Can Akgümüş.
  • “Representation of Female Characters in Fictional Texts” by Dr. Abdullah Özdemir.
  • “Freshwater as a Play” by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Z. Gizem Yılmaz.
  • “Waves Hitting the Stage: Translating Woolf” by Dr. Ercan Gürova.

TED University’s Department of English Language and Literature hosted the event, which was supported by TEDU WIL (TED University Women in Literature).

Mine Özyurt Kiliç, professor of English at Social Sciences University of Ankara, Turkey, and a member of the International Virginia Woolf Society (center), conceived of the archives project and made it a reality with the help of a dedicated team. Team members include Can Akgümüs, Atahan M. Karabīber, and Tugba Canakci.

 

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First staged reading of Woolf’s play Freshwater in Turkish

Posted in play, Turkey, tagged , , on Saturday 12 October 2024| Leave a Comment »

Virginia Woolf’s Freshwater: A Comedy made its first appearance in Turkish in Turkey on Sept. 6, 100 years after it was written.

A scene in the staged reading of Woolf’s Freshwater in Turkish on Sept. 6. Photo by Tuğba Çanakçı & Alperen Yedekçi.

The panel discussion of the play and the staged reading were part of the 2nd International UTAD Conference, with its theme of “Existence, Tradition and Future.” It was held at Bahçeşehir University’s Pera Sahne.

A panel discussion led by Prof. Dr. Özyurt Kılıç and joined by Associate Professor Dr. Z. Gizem Yılmaz, introduced the audience to Woolf’s exploration of the boundaries between life and art, and how Freshwater fits into her broader body of work. Following the discussion, the play was performed as a staged reading.

Professor Kılıç describes the play as an example of “audience-specific drama,” providing a unique and thought-provoking experience for attendees. It is also said to give theatre scholars an opportunity to explore the multi-layered meaning of the play.

Background of the play

Freshwater concerns Woolf’s great-aunt, photographer Julie Margaret Cameron. and her coterie of artists that included Alfred Lord Tennyson and George Frederick Watts.

Woolf wrote Freshwater, which is set in a Victorian garden on a summer evening, in 1923 and revised it in 1935. In it, she creates “a deliberately witty and wacky universe peopled with a tribe of artists, friends, and lovers in a playful mood,” according to the Women’s Project. In its time, the play was praised for its humor and its challenge to traditional theatre norms.

It was staged for the first time in the U.S. in early 2009.

Get the Turkish translation online

Ercan Gürova’s translation, presented with a foreword by Özyurt Kılıç, was published by Mitos Boyut Yayınları and can be accessed online.

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Pass time during the pandemic with Virginia Woolf brain teasers

Posted in coronavirus, events, tagged , , , , on Sunday 5 April 2020| Leave a Comment »

Virginia Woolf readers and scholars around the globe are coming up with creative ways to fill the time as they shelter at home during the current coronavirus pandemic.

  • A Norwegian typesetter is setting a sentence a day from On Being Ill.
  • Members and followers of the Italian Virginia Woolf Society are posting photos of themselves reading Woolf and reading her letters aloud via video.
  • And now, the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain is sending its members 100 questions about Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury — a few at a time. “There’s no prize, just a sense of satisfaction, perhaps even smugness, if you get them all right,” states the society’s email.

The first five brain teasers from the Big VW Quiz

Play along by answering these questions:

1) When was Virginia’s play Freshwater first performed?

(a) April 1933

(b) November 1934

(c) January 1935

d) December 1936

2) Where was it performed?

3) What year did Virginia first meet Vita Sackville-West?

4) What was Virginia’s first piece of published shorter fiction (as defined by Susan Dick in “Complete Shorter Fiction”)?

5) In which years were the first and second Post Impressionist exhibitions?

Join up

If you’d like to join the society to get the remaining 95 questions, you can find out more on the VWSGB website’s membership page.

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Gorey illustrations of Woolf in Freshwater

Posted in art exhibits, books, Freshwater, tagged , , on Friday 13 August 2010| Leave a Comment »

Virginia Woolf and Edward Gorey. I know something about both. But I did not know there was a connection between them until now.

It turns out that Gorey, known for his charmingly off-kilter stories and illustrations, created illustrations for the 1985 edition of Virginia Woolf’s play Freshwater: A Comedy. Woolf’s farce about her famous great-aunt Julia Margaret Cameron was her only work for the stage.

First performed in 1935 for one of the Bloomsbury Group’s theatrical evenings, Woolf’s lone play was later produced in New York. It is still being staged today, although not everyone appreciates its wit and humor.

Gorey, of course, is still popular, perhaps thanks to his animated credits for the PBS show “Mystery.” An exhibit of his work, “Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey,” opens today at the Orlando Museum of Art in Orlando, Fla., and will run through Oct. 31.

A catalog of the exhibit, which contains 175 reproductions, is also available. And you can shop for all sorts of thrilling items at the Edward Gorey House Store in Yarmouthport, Mass. One of my favorites is a set of note cards titled “Neglected Murderesses.”

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Freshwater on North Haven for one weekend run

Posted in Freshwater, performance, tagged , on Friday 8 May 2009| 1 Comment »

Virginia Woolf’s comedy Freshwater opens May 14 and will run for one weekend in the island town of North Haven, Maine.

The play concerns Woolf’s great-aunt, the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, and her coterie of artists that included Alfred Lord Tennyson and George Frederick Watts.

Performances will be 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 1 p.m. May 14 through 17, at Waterman’s Community Center, Main Street.

More details are available.

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