On to Atlanta!

So my one-woman show, THE PORCUPINE WOMAN, rocked at Colby College’s Strider Theatre on the 11th and 12th of September. I’ll spare you the self-regarding details and just say that I was really happy with how it went; that I was grateful to Colby’s Lynne Connor for directing the show; and that once again venturing outside of my safe zone has resulted in my failing to collapse before a crowd unconscious.

And I’ll also just say that the Saturday night show featured my whole family in the audience, and that son Zach led the standing ovation at the end.

For those of you that came in late, THE PORCUPINE WOMAN is an evening of interconnected stories and songs that I wrote and perform and sing, featuring not only the big piano but also the ol’ autoharp. The piece was originally commissioned by the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, where it was performed under the title of “My Avatar” with performance poet Krista Bell (The Queen of Cootchie) and novelist Vikram Chandra (Love and Longing in Bombay). This expanded version of the show contains some of the material from the Seattle shows (which I blogged about last spring); a few old chestnuts (some from I’M LOOKING THROUGH YOU, and some from the story “Trans” included in the collection LOVE IS A FOUR LETTER WORD; and some entirely new material written for the occasion.

The show’s next performance will be in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of the Southern Comfort Gender Conference. It’ll be presented on Thursday, September 24th, in the mid-evening– I THINK about 8:30 or 9, in the main ballroom.

I’ve just posted up a few new public speaking gigs for the fall; not too many, as befits my hope to pull back on some of my wack-job schedule, but enough to see me at Mass Bay college in Wellesley Hills, a corporate event in Richmond, VA, and another version of the Porcupine Woman (I think) at Yale University in the first week of November. Check out the Appearances page for more details– some of these are still being set up, and I’ll try to update things as they get firmer and clearer.

In the meantime, I got these two cool photos today from my former student and friend Sarah Getchell; I performed her wedding last year (I’m allowed, as a notary public, to perform marriages in the State of Maine). The photos are amazing, and I thank Sarah for her photogenic charm. And love.

Photos by Cassandra Allred