Sunday, December 06, 2009
A Child’s Christmas in Wales
A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas is the heartfelt recollection of Christmastime past. Dylan Thomas captures the sights, sounds, and smells of the Christmas of his childhood in this lyrical Christmas classic which has captured audiences for over fifty years.
Bob Penny is a local actor who has appeared in numerous plays in Birmingham and elsewhere, numerous films and television dramas, and numerous commercials. He is the recipient of five acting and teaching awards from Birmingham theater and UAB where he taught English and American literature as Associate Professor of English for 21 years
Make this the start of a holiday tradition. Seasonal treats will be served following the reading.
Bob Penny is a local actor who has appeared in numerous plays in Birmingham and elsewhere, numerous films and television dramas, and numerous commercials. He is the recipient of five acting and teaching awards from Birmingham theater and UAB where he taught English and American literature as Associate Professor of English for 21 years. Bob Penny is a founding member of The Seasoned Performers Salon Readers for
whom he has played Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit and Felix Unger opposite Sam Chalker’s Oscar in The Odd Couple. He is a retired English professor from UAB. Bob has done character and leading roles in Birmingham theatre for over 35 years. Some of his favorite roles were Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; Sancho Panza in Man of La Mancha; Azdak in Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle; Hector Nations in Foxfire; “Nonno” the old poet in Tennessee Williams Night of the Iguana; Estragon in Waiting for Godot. He has also appeared in commercial films and national television dramas: among them, Sweet Home Alabama; My Cousin Vinny; The Legend of Baggar Vance; and In the Heat of the Night. Bob can soon be seen reading the Commander in The Salon Readers’ upcoming concert reading of George Bernard Shaw’s Don Juan In Hell at Samford University on February 21. Bob will be reprising this role which he played in the Artburst performance last February.
Dylan Thomas: More than any other poet following W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender, it was Dylan Thomas who returned English poetry to a personal, lyrical romanticism. Auden and his friends wrote poems that were cool, mocking, and jazzy, and that reflected their divided attitude toward the modern world: their desire to belong to it and, at the same time, their distrust of it. Thomas’ poems, with their rush of feeling , either ignored the world or took it by storm. His language and images are frequently compressed and personal, and several of his poems are among the most difficult in the English language. Yet, many readers, even when they do not fully understand Thomas’ poems, find themselves responding to his magnificent use of words and sense of driving emotion. And study of his best poems reveal a coherent expression of Thomas’ personal view of the world: his joy in love and physical beauty, his rage against death, his search for a means of overcoming mortality. He said of his poetry, “My poems are written for the love of man and the praise of God—and I’d be a damn fool if they weren’t.” Thomas was born in Swansea, a seacoast town in Southern Wales. As he records it in “Quite Early One Morning,” he spent his childhood in Swansea, a great industrial center surrounded by fine natural scenery, and the Welsh countryside obviously left its mark on his work. Thomas reached an increasingly large audience through his verse plays and recordings of his poetry. He toured the United States several times, giving readings and lectures. At the time of his death at thirty-nine, he was recognized as one of the major British poets of the 20th century.
