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Ian

offline 63 friends
joined on 05/28/04
last updated 11/03/09
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My Testimonials

December 26, 2007
~Cosmic Ian, Performance artist, poet, Mime, Puppeteer of this dimension. The ancient energy you connect modern audiences with is special and unique! Your love of your art form and Individuality is a lesson for us all. I always look forward to your performances because for one brief moment I am not in the twenty-first century time/space but another place, not necessarily a time but a sensation, a mirror into other worlds filled with splendid divine and demonic characters~
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Who Is This Guy, Anyway?

Gender
Male
Age
39
Location
about me
Ian Thal is a multimedia artist who works in the media of poetry, mime, and puppet theatre, frequently collaborating with Cosmic Spelunker Theater, a troupe he co-founded with William J. Barnum and James Van Looy in 2001 and also performs with i Sebastiani "The Greatest Commedia dell'Arte Troupe in the Entire World!" In addition, he has performed with Bread & Puppet Theater and as part of the Dresden Dolls' Brigade.

His play, "Total War", was a semi-finalist in the 2009 Dorothy Silver Playwriting Competition, and he also performs his one-man play, "Arlecchino Am Ravenous" whenever and wherever possible.

His poetry has appeared in Out of the Blue Writers Unite (Crooked River Press, 2003), Tokens: Contemporary Poetry of the Subway (P&Q Press, 2003) and has work forthcoming in Becoming Fire (Andover-Newton Pess, 2006) as well as in such magazines as Boom! For Real, Crooked River Press, Flash!Point, Ibbetson Street Press, and Poesy. His work also appeared as part of an installation during the 2003 Boston CyberArts Festival

He also served as a mime and commedia dell'arte instructor at the Huntington Theatre, the Stoneham Theatre, Brookline Community Center for the Arts and Open Air Circus.
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My Friends

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What's Going on With Me

Bedroom in Inman Square $625 starting Now. ( housing » roommates ) One bedroom in a four bedroom second floor apartment in Inman Square, a ... read more
listing posted Tue, November 3, 2009 - 2:58 AM
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My Events

Staged Reading of "Total War," a play by Ian Thal (events » arts) Sunday, October 11, 2009 - 8:00 PM 10 RSVPs Last time Ian Thal staged a reading of his play, Total War, at Cambridge’s Outpost 186, the event was picketed by a lone protester with several signs and placards who accosted both audience and actors as they arrived.

Despite the provocations, which included a number of anti-Semitic chants, Thal regarded the evening a success, as it allowed him the opportunity to present a stripped down reading of the play and make plans for a rewrite of a play that had already been named a semi-finalist in the 2009 Dorothy Silver Playwriting Competition.

Total War is a five-act play set at a Catholic university where the student newspaper has published a Holocaust denial advertisement. Before faculty, students, and staff can begin the expected dialogue on free speech and religious pluralism, an anarchist-cell using the nom de guerre of “Total War” begins a campaign of guerrilla art attacks.
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From The Journals of Ian Thal

Last week, Don Hall, Chicago-based actor, director, theatre-observer, and activist (and well-known enough in the theatrical blogosphere that I trust someone will correct me if I left anything out) has been posting a series on the audition process on his blog An Angry White Guy in Chicago. Having recently been in the position of casting actors for Total War, and like Hall, not being "
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Not only do I use Facebook, but I am in the Facebook movie.Earlier this week I was in a scene in the upcoming film about the creation of Facebook, The Social Network directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. I was hired to play a mime performing in Harvard Square in 2003. Interestingly enough, I did perform mime in Harvard Square in 2003 and since I was using my own costume, it
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In a recent thread on the Plays and Playwrights Yahoogroup a number of participants asked what it meant when it is written in the body of the play that it takes place in "the present" (presumingly when it was written) but that "present-day" references are often dated by the time of a given production.Of course to my mind, even "the present" is a specific milieu; stories set in "the present"
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Have you heard the story about the event promoter who advertises a reluctant artist with the full expectation that it will force the artist to perform at an event, even after the artist says, "no?" No? With the internet and just a little bit of insanity, anything is possible! Read on, gentle readers and learn why "to defriend" is such a useful neologism...I have never hidden that my entrance
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Like many artists, I have a day-job that is not in the arts. One Thursday, I find myself in front of a high school advanced placement economics class, filling in for an absent teacher, and attempting to fill in the missing historical context from the handout that the absent teacher had left behind.One of the students asks, "Mister Thal, are you still a mime?""Yes, I am," I respond, "but I am
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originally published at From the Journals of Ian Thal
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My del.icio.us List

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My Recent Activity

Re: This can't be legal (in Doctor Who) Agreed Gerard,

It takes a great deal of mental clarity to play a character with a consistent foreign accent (since Estuary English would be foreign to Tennant.) I'm also an actor (I specialize in commedia dell'arte) and one has to adopt not ju... read more
discussion post on Sun, November 8, 2009 - 5:46 AM
Re: where is everyone? (in fluxus) I think that people just abandoned Tribe over the past year because of all the service outages, either moving to Facebook or the blogosphere.
discussion post on Sun, November 8, 2009 - 5:29 AM
Re: BSG: The Plan (in Battlestar Galactica) After the series finale, "The Plan" is like a dinner invitation from the ex- one thought one would marry but at last moment realized was a paranoid, jealous, pathological liar.
discussion post on Tue, November 3, 2009 - 2:49 AM
Re: The beacon in Season 3 that killed the cylons (in Battlestar Galactica) Tedward is right. It matches up with the continuity of season 2 but makes no sense in the context of season 4.
discussion post on Tue, October 27, 2009 - 4:54 AM
Re: Mime Outfit (in Mime Theatre) I hunt used clothing stores for whatever I can use as a costume.

Keep in mind that there really isn't a "mime uniform"-- even amongst white-face mimes, the costuming is quite varied.
discussion post on Tue, October 13, 2009 - 10:05 PM
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My Blog

Seeking actors for April 26th reading of my play, "Total War", Semi-Finalist for the 2009 Dorothy Silver Playwriting Competition.

ianthal.blogspot.com/2009/03...-of.html
Sat, April 4, 2009 - 7:30 PM permalink - 0 comments
 
I don't actively use the Tribe blog feature anymore since I prefer something less gated like blogspot, but I thought my tribe friends would want to check this out:

ianthal.blogspot.com/2008/06...lle.html
Tue, June 3, 2008 - 2:20 PM permalink - 0 comments
 
This past month I paid tribute to one of my heroes, the late Marcel Marceau, and follow a controversy of which I first wrote this past April regarding the exhibition of an artwork that contained Holocaust denial material:

ianthal.blogspot.com/2007/09/
Sat, October 6, 2007 - 4:28 PM permalink - 0 comments
 
I have relocated my main blog to ianthal.blogspot.com for greater flexibility. This month I…

…explain why the production of the “Scottish Play” I’m in has been postponed:

ianthal.blogspot.com/2007/08...ber.html

…reflect on almost a year of studying kathak, a classical dance form from Northern India:

ianthal.blogspot.com/2007/08...hak.html

…see a performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”:

ianthal.blogspot.com/2007/08...mon.html

…describe the commedia dell’arte and mime classes I taught at Open Air Circus:

ianthal.blogspot.com/2007/08...cus.html

ianthal.blogspot.com/2007/08...cus.html

…ask for readers’ help in identifying two Javanese wayang kulit shadow puppets:

ianthal.blogspot.com/2007/08...ets.html

…describe my revision process as I work on my play:

ianthal.blogspot.com/2007/08...rds.html



Sun, September 2, 2007 - 7:49 AM permalink - 0 comments
 
I have relocated my main blog to ianthal.blogspot.com for greater flexibility.

This is an index of postings from July 2007:

A clip from “The Adventures of CMYK” a short film in which I play a foppish classics teacher:

ianthal.blogspot.com//2007/0...myk.html

Rehearsals begin for Macbeth and I discuss various aspects of the production:

ianthal.blogspot.com//2007/0...eth.html
ianthal.blogspot.com//2007/0...gue.html
ianthal.blogspot.com//2007/0...lio.html
ianthal.blogspot.com//2007/0...ive.html

The Literary Review of Canada prints my letter regarding Professor Shiraz Dossa’s trip to Tehran:

ianthal.blogspot.com/2007/07...ada.html

A poem of mine is published in a new online poetry journal:

ianthal.blogspot.com//2007/0...l-0.html

I have a little disagreement with the local business association regarding their attitude towards performing artists:

ianthal.blogspot.com//2007/0...and.html
Wed, August 1, 2007 - 6:55 AM permalink - 0 comments
 
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My Requests

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