playbill vip

In 1977, Glaysher took a theatre course in the Interpretative Reading of Poetry, learning that the Greek rhapsodes would travel throughout ancient Greece reciting Homer. Before long the idea of writing an epic poem became compelling and the dream that one day he might also revive the art of the rhapsode.

In Plato's Ion, Socrates speaks with a rhapsode who has just arrived in Athens. Ion has been performing in Epidaurus at the festival of Asclepius, and preparing to perform at the festival of the Panathenaia, the major seven day festival dedicated to Athena, patron goddess of wisdom and Athens. Ancient documents, amphorae, and modern scholarship attest that the rhapsodes, standing on a bema, performed Homer and other Greek epic poets in amphitheatres with audiences of up to 20,000 people, for more than 900 years, from at least about 600 B.C. or earlier to AD 300.

Opening Hymn, Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto Fringe, July 10, 2023
YouTube. 2:16 minutes. https://youtu.be/m5Tv-nS9lRY

Over sixty readings and performances  at the Michigan Theater Building, TheatreNOVA, Hathaway’s Hideaway, Underground at Hilberry Theatre, Wayne State University, Shelton Theater, University of Michigan’s Rackham Amphitheatre, Saginaw Valley State University, Detroit Public Library, Troy Public Library, Hannan Café, Austin International Poetry Festival, Paint Creek Unitarian Universalist, Birmingham Unitarian, Grosse Pointe Unitarian, Universalist Unitarian Church of Farmington, Troy Interfaith, Theosophical Society of Detroit, Crazy Wisdom Bookstore, East Side Reading Series, MUSINGS, The Farmhouse, Barnes & Noble, BookWoman, Espresso Royale, Sweetwaters, Himalayan, Cafe International, Sacred Grounds Café, Tuesdays at North Beach Branch Library, Café Trieste, Florey’s Books, West Park, Rochester Municipal Park Band Shell, Parliament of the World’s Religions 2021, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Ringwald Theatre, Toronto Fringe Festival at Theatre Passe Muraille, Edinburgh Fringe Festival at artSpace@StMarks Unitarian Church, Actors Temple Theatre, etc.

PRESS KIT | Press Release, 7 Photos, Program for Solo Performance, Bio, Industry Theatre Marketplace, Touring, etc. https://EarthrisePress.Net/press_kit.html

Into the Ruins of Modernity (Seeking invitations also to perform. 90 minutes) weaves together much of Glaysher's lyric and narrative poetry from two books, IntoThe Ruins and The Bower of Nil. Dramatization, not a conventional poetry reading, a sweeping survey of the atrocities we human beings perpetrate on one another and the philosophical descent into modern nihilism that has made dehumanization and violence all the more possible. Over the long arch of global civilization, Glaysher affirms the struggle toward developing international institutions, like the United Nations, and a wider understanding of the depths of human consciousness. Evokes a reaffirmation of our deepest human capacities for cooperation and peace.