Synopses & Reviews
Poetry. Drama. Rodrigo Toscano's COLLAPSIBLE POETICS THEATER is a genre-expanding force to be reckoned with. From polyvocalic pieces for multiple readers to "body-movement poems" to "simultaneous activities pieces" to anti-masques and plays, these fourteen texts and scores constitute one of the most sustained studies of poetic thinking and action to come in a long time. The question Toscano poses is "can the poem be tested any further?"
Synopsis
"[This] collection of . . . multi-disciplinary adventures induces territories of dissent and identity, both of and beyond the stage. . . . [Rodrigo] Toscano has produced an often gleeful romp wherein the geometry of the self affirms/celebrates its style while steadfastly subverting institutionalized forms."Sustainable Aircraft
Synopsis
Part carnivalesque rap, part sleight-of-hand shuffle, Collapsible Poetics Theater maneuvers its way through public language of several sorts to give theater a Realpolitik poetic voice. From BALM TO BILK, wordplay doubles as subversive text in virtue of its voicing passed through from player to player. The poetry, built of linguistic slippage, occurs all the more readily for the bilingual speaker or the ex-patriot, whose frames of reference are plural and yet destabilized.
With a cape, confetti and placard, two players and Master of Ceremonies conduct their feints and dodges about concepts of engagement and faith. Has this author been reading the critical social spatiality of Michel de Certeau? The author has certainly been reading poetics, from Mikhail Bahktin's radical linguistics to the controlled clamor of Carla Harryman's dramatic praxis. The art of play has found a talented proponent.
--Marjorie Welish, 2008 National Poetry Series Judge.
Synopsis
"Rodgrigo Toscano's Collapsible Poetics Theater is a genre-expanding force to be reckoned with."
--Marjorie Welish
About the Author
RODRIGO TOSCANO is the author of To Leveling Swerve (2005), Platform (2004), The Disparities (2002) and Partisans (1999). His poetry has appeared in Best American Poetry 2004, War and Peace (2004 and 2007), In the Criminal's Cabinet: An anthology of poetry and fiction (2004), and in McSweeney's "Poets Picking Poets." His polyvocalic pieces, poetics plays, and body-movement poems, and radio pieces have been performed and broadcast widely. His work has been translated into French, German, Italian, and Catalonian. Toscano is originally from Southern California. He works in Manhattan at the Labor Institute, and lives in Brooklyn.