#jason lipeles

[emilieideas]

Yalobusha Review, Issue 30

"Lake With Many Rooms" by Ansley Clark

"perfuming / like an enormous lake light"

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From "Apprehensions" by Ayesha Raees

"The ghost was once a body. The ghost was once a repulsive thing. The ghost and I make out on my couch." "The womb is a home too small to climb back into."

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From "Salience" by George Kovalenko 

“Even this bold, blue anxiety—its thunderheads / accessorized by starlings in the afternoon’s / narrowest hours"

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From "Floriography" by Kelly Hoffer

"forget me not in the scorpion grass, / my heart’s ease is dressed / in lady’s glove, fastened / bachelor’s button."

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From “The Sacreament: Apostles” by Alexander Scalfano

"I hold my heart under the lake water to wash the oil from its feathers" "for the god of wishes, the god of little twilights, / the god of lost birds, the god of summer discord" "(because it’s a day for things to imagine they are larger than themselves)" "and I’m as stunned as the oriole in the wind’s hair, / out of season, the wrong color now" "something the moon might ladle onto your sleeping face"

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From “Everything in Moderation” by John Goodhue

“you that pulls together our system from a long series / of dark vowels.” “we’ve changed the body into the ladder that leads into the same body.“ “yes there is so much color in the trees at the hour before ache begins.“ “what if carrying around nostalgia were not the carrying around of a wild amphibian.“ “what if colors were looser, slipping“ “common sense feeling adverbial in this wind”

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From “Dream” by John Goodhue

"Sound / of a shovel in the sky / making too much room."

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From “Fluid Things” by Jason Lipeles

"in the beginning / seals stood up on their fins / and rattlesnakes beat their tails on wet dirt like cloth drums / and every feather on the mockingbird shone like a mirrored / window" “the loons always / crowed on command / like grandfather clocks /and so we took them with us.” “God was superstitious and liked her good things to be loved.”

[riting]

See You at the Funeral! by Tova Katz

Puppett on See You at the Funeral!

After Act I, my neighbor in the audience said something like “I don't know her. Is that how she actually is?” The performer had disappeared and all that stood before us was her character. “No. That's not how she is.” Our experience lived somewhere between the birth of this production and a baby in the woods. I was immediately the fan I was called on to be for this gay country singer. The audience brimmed with laughter -- engaged, at the ready. So when grief, infanticide, and PTSD infected the stage, the audience was absorbed and invested. We were surprised and anxious. Still engaged. And then she was gone and someone else emerged.

The set seemed to come from another time, but then it was seamlessly included and incorporated in Act II. Medusa strolled onto the stage and dominated it, commandeering both space and time -- our time. We revisited Greek mythology with feminist perspectives, revised our assumptions, questioned our judgements of good and bad. At the same time, we sat in the present, hoping for the worst, and knowing it. Getting excited when it came. Do we look away?

The set had become part of the story, only to be torn away and turned into something else. Act III began with rolling waves, oozing across the stage. It was the Broadwater, but no longer just the Broadwater. Now we sat outside place as well as time. Were we dead, or merely contemplating on the future prospects of our demise? A constant evolution. Evaluations, questions, humor, and introspection. An invitation to think about what we deserve. A chance to transform. Maybe we changed how we judge others and how we judge ourselves. And now we can reach for what we want without questioning our worth.

She walked slowly offstage. The cane clicking, banging, ringing. Echoing and fading into an introspective silence.

Puppett is a filmmaker and actor with a background in editing and post-production. Their films have premiered at Slamdance Film Festival, Inside Out, and Outfest, and in 2019 they played Max in the LA premiere of Taylor Mac's HIR at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble. 

Jason Lipeles on See You at the Funeral!

I'm looking over my notes scribbled in my journal. I circled "red lips" twice and "eyes" three times. I circled "question" and underlined "trembling." It was dark, I was scribbling, and I kept coming back to the actor's eyes— glittering and focused.   I kept having this feeling like this black glitter would pour out of the actor's mouth. I imagined the glitter taking up her entire face and then swallowing the stage. Holding her fist over her heart she beat her chest and asked us to do the same. Creating music from nothing.

Her boots looked tan in the light but I learned from my friend that they were a dusty rose. I circled "control" and "stone" or is it "stare"? "ANGER" in all caps and "DO WHAT YOU LIKE" next to it. My notes don't capture it exactly, but they get close to the feeling of being between states.

Jason Lipeles is a Los Angeles-based poet, artist, and human-being-with-feelings. He is an alum of the AJU/Asylum Arts’ Reciprocity Artist Retreat. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Image + Text from Ithaca College in 2018.

See You at the Funeral! happened at The Broadwater on November 29-30, 2019. 

Tova Katz (writer/composer/performer) is an LA-based queer interdisciplinary theatre artist, creating visceral and socially engaged work that explores the intersections of relational, cultural, and mystical forces. Imagination saves her life every day. @tovakatzartist

Photos by John Klopping.