These Teachers’ Notes provide useful ways into the text, but are not meant to be exhaustive. At the conclusion teachers will find a discussion about free and metrical verse and figurative language. Additional resources are also listed, including critical essays by Jeri Kroll about the verse novel and websites and articles about eating disorders.

Vanishing Point is available from Puncher&Wattmann http://puncherandwattmann.com

I. Introduction - Vanishing Point (verse novel)

Synopsis

How do you learn to be comfortable in your own body? This crossover verse novel introduces readers to nineteen-year-old Diana Warren, who suffers from anorexia and bulimia. She faces a challenging situation at home with dysfunctional parents and a Down-syndrome brother, which causes her to seek refuge in female roles models from the mythic past. An Irish racehorse trainer who reignites her childhood love of horses causes her to question everything. Will she choose life or death? And what happens when that choice is taken out of her hands?

Plot Outline

Diana seeks strong female role models but only women celebrated in myths and her grandmother come close to providing what she thinks she needs. Her grandmother lives in South Australia’s mid-north where Diana learned to ride horses as a child. She revelled in the sense of freedom riding gave her and, in particular, the connection she felt with her own body. When Diana meets Conor, an Irish racehorse trainer, her love of horses returns. When a misunderstanding causes her to retreat, she starves herself and is hospitalised.

Diana comes back to life in hospital and, with the help of a psychiatrist, begins to perceive herself as others might. Conor introduces her to the thrills of horse racing when she is well enough, training her as a track rider. She comes to appreciate that she needs good health to achieve what she wants. When she and her brother are trapped in the pine forest by a bushfire, she almost loses all she has worked for. Diana then has to confront what is truly important in life.

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II. Biographical Background

Personal

Jeri Kroll was born and grew up in New York City, but she spent ten summers in the Catskill Mountains at camp pretending she wasn’t a city person. She has travelled widely in Europe and began her academic career in the UK and the US before moving to Australia in 1978.

Jeri’s hectic life is divided between her job, writing, family and horses. The children have escaped but all live in South Australia. The three dogs and three cats lived to an inordinately old age, breaking the local vet’s longevity records. She and husband Jeff Chilton have now downsized to one manic blue heeler. Jeri is still the oldest member (in terms of age and tenure) of the Fleurieu Horse and Pony Club/Yankalilla Districts Riding Club and continues to compete when she can in equestrian events on her horse Pete.

Jeri began her career by publishing books of poems and stories for adults. When she had her own child she read to him daily and began to appreciate the variety and quality of children’s books. Eventually she tried her hand at a picture book and so began a new chapter in her life as a writer for young people.

Professional

Jeri Kroll is currently Dean of Graduate Research at Flinders University and Professor of English and Creative Writing. Formerly she was Program Coordinator of Creative Writing. She has published on Samuel Beckett, contemporary poetry and fiction, children’s literature and creative writing research and pedagogy. Past President of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), she is on the United Kingdom editorial Boards of New Writing and Write4Children as well as the AAWP’s journal, TEXT. She has published twenty-five titles for adults and young people, including poetry, picture books and novels. See http://www.jerikroll.com for full details. In 2013 Research Methods in Creative Writing (Palgrave Macmillan), co-edited with Graeme Harper, was published as well as Workshopping the Heart: New and Selected Poems (Wakefield Press). In 2011 a staged reading of her crossover verse novel, Vanishing Point, took place at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ‘Page to Stage’ Festival and Puncher and Wattman published the full text in the US in 2014 and in Australia in 2015. In October 2014, a MainStage production of Vanishing Point took place at George Washington University in Washington DC. Roy Barber composed a full score. The play was subsequently one of eight winners (Region II) at the 47th Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and performed again at the festival held in Cleveland, Ohio, in January 2015.

Qualifications

PhD, Columbia University, New York City, USA, 1974 MA, University of Warwick, UK, 1968 BA Honours, Smith College, Massachusetts, USA, 1967

For further information about Jeri Kroll’s life and career, please see http://www.jerikroll.com, which contains a full description of her publications as well as downloadable photos.

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III. Selected reviews of Jeri Kroll’s recent books – Vanishing Point, Workshopping the Heart and The Mother Workshops

About Vanishing Point

‘...Kroll uses a variety of poetic forms throughout...these are nearly always expertly handled and their variety makes an important contribution to the book’s momentum.... Certainly, Vanishing Point provides a satisfyingly complex and well-organised narrative, together with memorable characters... – Geoff Page, The Australian, 25 July 2015 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/poetry-from-ivy-ireland-maria-zajkowski-verse-novel-by-jeri-kroll/story-fn9n8gph-1227452874685

* * * *

‘The book [Workshopping the Heart] concludes with the opening chapter of Vanishing Point, a forthcoming verse novel. If Kroll maintains the lyric intensity of this taster it is sure – as this New & Selected is – to be a great success.’ – Aidan Coleman, Cordite Poetry Review http://cordite.org.au/reviews/coleman-jkroll/

* * * *

‘This crossover poetry novel is written convincingly in the voice of a teenage girl with anorexia. As a narrative, it is page-turning, as a series of cameos and incidents it has a touching lyrical intimacy.’ — Jan Owen, Transnational Literature

* * * *

Kroll experiments at the nexus of lyric and narrative, cumulatively taking a story forward while also offering the reader associative insight into the complex emotional life of a young woman.’ —Rose Lucas, Australian Book Review

* * * *

‘The verse novel has become a familiar form of Australian poetry. A writer as much as a poet, Kroll’s gift for narrative and poetry come together in an extended way in Vanishing Point, a work about a nineteen-year-old girl’s relationship with her body…. This poetic narrative allows her to explore different formal territory from the earlier work.’ – Tina Giannoukos, TEXT http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct14/giannoukos_rev.htm

* * * *

‘At no point does the book lose its dramatic momentum. In fact, so compelling is the plot at times that it takes some effort to slow down and read the poems fully as poetry should be read…. but the poems repay second and third readings where the complexity of the work begins to unfold.’

‘Vanishing Point shows, in the most exquisite poetry, that fleeting joy is real transcendence.’ Page 3 of 18

– Magdalena Ball, The Compulsive Reader, http://www.compulsivereader.com/2014/10/26/a-review-of-vanishing-point-by-jeri-kroll/

About Workshopping the Heart

‘Workshopping the Heart brings together poems from Jeri Kroll’s five previous books of poetry, with thirty or so pages of new poems and the opening chapter of a verse novel. Her distinctive voice – lyric, tough and spare – is evident early.’

‘Her lyrics on motherhood are compelling and unflinchingly sharp – never collapsing into sentimentality.’

‘In later poems the son’s childhood and his absence in adulthood are movingly evoked. I can recall few poets, in Australia, who have written so consistently well on this theme.’ – Aidan Coleman, Cordite Poetry Review http://cordite.org.au/reviews/coleman-jkroll/

* * * *

‘Such energy, boldness, and unexpected leaps and turns; whether going at a cracking pace or else pausing reflectively, the poetry is always vibrant and engaging . . . The originality of the images is one of the delights.’ — Jan Owen, Transnational Literature, 7:1 (Nov 2014) http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/current.html

* * * *

‘Kroll’s titles, over the years, have not only been arresting but also indicative. Her collections tend to feature a title sequence which dominates and unifies…’

‘Kroll’s next two books, Monster Love (1990) and House Arrest (1993), deal with the overwhelming nature of pregnancy, childbirth and child raising. This is well-covered territory for many Australian female poets but Kroll brings to it an angle of her own, an ironic, even humorous desperation…’

‘Yet another important rite of passage is treated in The Mother Workshops (2004) where the poet returns to visit her dementia-stricken mother in Florida. Here, too, Kroll…adopts an idiosyncratic (and ironic) approach, this time by casting each poem as a class exercise. The device…seems to intensify [experiences].’

‘In relation to such “exercises” it’s worth noting that Workshopping the Heart has a number of accomplished sonnets and villanelles which provide variety and also contest the long-established free verse orthodoxy, both here and in Kroll’s country of origin.’

‘Kroll’s New Poems (2008-2012) in the book’s penultimate section show no falling off in quality.’ – Geoff Page, The Australian http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/lucy-williams-and-jeri-kroll …December 13, 2014, 1-4.

* * * *

‘In any poet’s career, the publication of a ‘New and Selected’ is a significant event…. Jeri Kroll’s

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Workshopping the Heart … does not disappoint…’

‘In a postmodernist world of questioning narratives, Kroll produces transparent poetry of experience.’ – Tina Giannoukos, TEXT http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct14/giannoukos_rev.htm

* * * *

‘Workshopping the Heart develops out of emotional material…from what lies close to a personal core and also to the visceral pulse of a human body. Seeing and understanding…despite loss, despite damage, despite knowledge that the heart will one day stop, this is the vital stuff of poetry: what makes the imperfect experience of life so worth noticing and valuing.’ – Rose Lucas, Australian Book Review

* * * *

‘There is a range of work – the witty, the moving, the accessible, the ironic and frank…that gives the reader an opportunity to see the advancement through the years; the development of an accomplished writer’s work that can come only with time and craft.’ – John Miles, InDaily

* * * *

Jeri Kroll’s new collection of selected poems is titled Workshopping the Heart. It does just that. It takes you into the chambers of the human heart as it pulses and courses with blood through arteries, uncovering dark recesses and pools of light. There is love, there is pain, there is fear, there is grief, there is disappointment and jealousy, there is wonder, there is joy, and there is ambivalence . . . . Her title is therefore unusually accurate: this collection of two hundred pages comprising old and new poems as well as excerpts from Vanishing Point, a verse novel…. is for workshopping the heart… – Dominique Hecq, http://bukkertillibul.net/ASU_Archive.html

About The Mother Workshops

‘… readings from The Mother Workshops would superbly complement and enrich texts by Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf.’ – Anne Magee, Viewpoint

* * * *

‘The painful ambivalence of ageing’s inverted parent/child relationship … is brilliantly captured… The toughness of truth tempered throughout by tenderness, this is a perceptive and beautifully balanced tribute.’ – Katharine England, Advertiser

* * * *

‘… there is a strength and vigour in her best poems that make the work of many of her contemporaries seem enervated and vapid. Her characteristic style is direct and forthright, engaging the reader immediately and sustaining that engagement by taut rhythms, metaphoric inventiveness and ironic wit.’ – Bev Roberts, Australian Book Review

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IV. Introduction to the Dramatic Production at George Washington University (October 2014)

In 2011 a staged reading of the crossover verse novel, Vanishing Point, took place at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ‘Page to Stage’ Festival and Puncher and Wattman published the novel in Australia in 2015. It is available worldwide on amazon. In October 2014, a MainStage production of Vanishing Point took place at George Washington University in Washington DC. Roy Barber composed a full score. The play was subsequently one of eight winners (Region II) at the 47th Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and performed again at the festival held in Cleveland, Ohio, in January 2015.

*See Publicity, Program (Adapter/Director’s Notes and Author’s Notes, etc.) as well as related information in the Additional Resources section at the end of the Teachers’ Notes.

V. Ways into the Text

Overview for study of the verse novel – Vanishing Point contains free and formal verse as well as short prose pieces and prose poems.

The study of poetry teaches students how to empathise with other points of view by introducing the concept of voice (focalisation) and character. In a verse novel, many of the poems might function as monologues. Others will function as dialogues, with additional characters speaking. Poets use a range of strategies (figurative language; syntax; rhythm; alliteration; onomatopoeia; humour) and any of these can focus class discussion.

The narrative dimension of a verse novel exploits many of the fiction writer’s techniques. Discussions can focus on structure (plot) and character.

Focus Questions

1. In her review of the selections from Vanishing Point included in Workshopping the Heart, Rose Lucas remarks that ‘Kroll experiments at the nexus of lyric and narrative, cumulatively taking a story forward while also offering the reader associative insight into the complex emotional life of a young woman.’ —Rose Lucas, Australian Book Review

Do you agree with this assessment? Choose two or three poems on which to focus and construct an argument to support your case.

2. What does the title Vanishing Point mean literally and what might it mean metaphorically in the verse novel? First define the word and then support your point of view through selections from the text.

3. Verse Novels (hybrid forms): Students can research the contemporary young adult verse novel, the adult verse novel and the crossover verse novel. What are the dominant characteristics of each?

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How different are they? What is meant by ‘hybrid form’?

Choose another young adult or crossover verse novel and compare it to Vanishing Point. How do they differ stylistically and structurally?

You might choose a verse novel that deals with a dysfunctional family and/or body image to refine your comparisons. How does each poet treat the central themes? What strategies does each poet use? You can consider structure, form, vocabulary, etc.

4. Anorexia and bulimia are predominantly twentieth and twenty-first century diseases, although some eating-disorder experts now suggest that it existed at least in the middle ages and possibly before. They point to documented cases of excessive fasting by those in religious orders. Students can research anorexia and bulimia and discuss why young women and men succumb to them. They can then focus on why Diana, the protagonist of Vanishing Point, becomes anorexic.

*Teachers can read Jeri Kroll’s critical studies of the verse novel online. References appear at the end. She discusses Diana’s situation in particular in four of the essays listed.

VI. Forms

Vanishing Point contains different poetic forms and some prose. In his review, Geoff Page says:

‘…Kroll uses a variety of poetic forms throughout…These are nearly always expertly handled and their variety makes an important contribution to the book’s momentum….Certainly, Vanishing Point provides a satisfyingly complex and well-organised narrative, together with memorable characters…’ The Australian, 25 July 2015 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/poetry-from-ivy-ireland-maria-zajkowski-verse-novel-by-jeri-kroll/story-fn9n8gph-1227452874685

Conventional forms might restrict a poet but they also challenge and stimulate. The form itself sometimes allows poets to discover things that they would not have said otherwise. Modern and contemporary poets in particular have played with conventional forms in order to rediscover what they can offer. Some writers have adhered strictly to the rules and others have relaxed them almost to the point where readers find it hard to recognise the structure.

The Sonnet: Vanishing Point contains four sonnets. Consider some or all of the following questions. Are they conventional sonnets or are they variations? Does the sonnet form interfere with the novel’s narrative flow? If not, why not? Why do you think a sonnet was appropriate at this point in the narrative? Did you recognise that they were sonnets on a first reading of the novel?

Sonnets:

‘Recipe for the Good Life’ (26)

‘Paradise Gained’ (56 – the second part of a longer poem)

‘Once Upon a Time’ (249)

‘Limbo’ (253)Page 7 of 18

The Prose Poem:

Definition

A prose poem is usually short – a paragraph or two or as long as two pages – and set out as prose. The language is rhythmical and sonorous, exploiting poetic features such as simile and metaphor. This makes the language highly charged. The poet frequently focuses on an image or a series of images. Alternatively, the prose poem can tell a brief story that is self-contained or, if part of a sequence or larger work, moves the narrative forward. In addition, a prose poem can function as a parable or fable.

Which of the prose sections of Vanishing Point do you think function as prose poems? Why? Focus on some of the qualities identified in the above definition.

Additional Form:

Haiku ‘Light’ (125 – epigraph to Part Two: Plateau) Why do you think that the only haiku in the verse novel appears as an epigraph?

VII. Myths and Legends

The Acknowledgements (282-83) refer to both classical Greek and Roman myths as well as to Aboriginal Myths.

This crossover verse novel exploits Greek and Roman myths about Artemis or Diana, who is a virgin goddess, Apollo’s twin sister and hunter-in-chief to the gods (see ‘Namesake’). Research the variety of Greek and Roman stories about Diana and also her transformation through the centuries (Selene, Hecate, etc.). What constants can you find in her personality and why do her alter egos appeal to Diana, the protagonist of Vanishing Point? Does she in fact want to become ‘like them’; in other words, does she want to embody their attributes?

What other similarities can you discover in the myths that influence Diana, including Aboriginal ones? Why do you think they appeal to her? Does her understanding of any of the myths change as she learns more about herself?

You can research myths from other cultures that offer useful comparisons with the ones included in Vanishing Point. What do they suggest about each culture’s attitude to women? Do you find them restrictive or empowering?

VIII. Figurative Language

The centrality of poetic language in human thought and of metaphor, in particular, has been pointed out since Aristotle first began studying the manner in which we manipulate language. In the Poetics and the Rhetoric he affirms that metaphor teaches us in ways ordinary language cannot. The section at the conclusion of these notes defines simile, metaphor and symbol, provides

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an extended discussion of the significance of figurative language and explains the differences between free and metrical verse.

Similes and Metaphors – Poems in Vanishing Point offer innumerable examples of the use of similes and metaphors. Select ones that seem the most powerful or effective to you and discuss how they support characterisation and/or narrative. Do any recur and, if so, why?

IX. Vanishing Point as a Research Project: The Verse Novel as Generic Innovation and Vanishing Point (creative work)

This verse novel has also been embedded in a research project that I undertook at Flinders University. I produced what are called both traditional (scholarly) and non-traditional (creative) outputs in the form of critical and practice-led research essays as well as the novel itself and the stage adaptation. Below is an outline of what I hoped to achieve, using the template devised by the Australian Commonwealth’s Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) program.

Aims and Significance of the Project

As an introduction to this project, I reproduce below the Research Statement that accompanied my creative piece, ‘Climate Change,’ in the ERA Special Issue of the A journal TEXT, which adhered to the 250-word ERA limit for peer review material.

Research BackgroundThe contemporary verse novel has colonized young adult literature in Australia and the US (Alexander 2005). Its practitioners favour free verse and colloquial language but have not taken risks, exploiting poetry’s imaginative potential. Story (focusing on ‘issues’) and character are privileged at the expense of a largely unsophisticated style; no one has replicated the electricity and passion of a Dorothy Porter for this audience. As well, the genre itself has not been extended.

Research ContributionThese extracts come from a verse novel, Vanishing Point, which experiments with generic hybridity, alternating between poetry and prose in order to test whether a comprehensive structural doubling can more fully express character and story. The doubling extends to the incorporation of two subjects, first love and anorexia, mediated through a passion for horses. Metaphors relating to food, colour and bodies (human and animal) permeate the work as a whole, facilitating character portrayal as well as thematic and narrative coherence. Meaning is embedded in this ‘interstitial’ (Heinz Insu Fenkl 2002) structure, not achieved before in a verse novel, where generic boundaries dissolve and reform.

Research SignificanceTexts can only grow and alter through full reader interaction, as Margaret Atwood suggests (2002). Vanishing Point challenges readers with its metaphorical echoes and stylistic tensions,

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underpinning the novel, therefore, with both a metaphorical and generic architecture. Never losing sight of its dual origins, the interstitial work inhabits a permanent liminal space that is positive rather than negative, introducing a young adult audience to the potential of both genres.

X. Definitions

Free Verse: Free verse is a term that originally was coined to describe nineteenth-century innovative French verse that did not obey the strict rules of classical French prosody – vers libre. It has become a catchall term that covers all English verse that is not organised into conventional patterns (such as the sonnet) or into strict metre. Free verse usually does not rhyme, but it can. It frequently exploits other strategies that play with rhythm, sound and structure. For example, a poem might contain many instances of assonance and consonance.

assonance1: resemblance of sound in words or syllables2 a: relatively close juxtaposition of similar sounds especially of vowels b: repetition of vowels without repetition of consonants (as in stony and holy) used as an alternative to rhyme in verse.consonance1: harmony or agreement among components2 a: correspondence or recurrence of sounds especially in words; specifically: recurrence or repetition of consonants especially at the end of stressed syllables without the similar correspondence of vowels (as in the final sounds of “stroke” and “luck”). (See http://www.meriam-webster.com/dictionary)

Line lengths in free verse poems can be irregular but regular in some stanzas, depending on the poem’s meaning. In other words, the poet herself can establish a pattern that determines how the poem needs to be read.

Free verse is sometimes confused with blank verse (the metre in which Shakespeare wrote his plays). Blank verse is simply unrhymed iambic pentameter (five beat lines comprising iambs – or one unstressed and one stressed syllable). The phrase ‘she walks’ is an iamb because we do not stress ‘she’ when we speak, but ‘walk.’ For further information, consult any glossary of literary terms.

Another description of free verse:

It is often claimed, with Walt Whitman’s poetry as an example, that free verse poets discarded poetic conventions like set rhyme and regular meter. However, free verse is not simply free and easy writing. Instead, it is lined verse that works against the ghosts and memory of fixed forms, that plays with jazz, song, and other popular forms, that works into and out of stanzas and with and against a variety of conventional expectations. Free verse did not arrive, as one

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might assume, newly on the scene with Whitman and then, immediately, all other types of verse lost their currency.

From Wendy Bishop, Thirteen Ways of Looking For a Poem. (New York: Longman, 2000), 408.

Figurative Language (image, simile, metaphor - also see VIII)

The centrality of poetic language in human thought and of metaphor, in particular, has been pointed out since Aristotle first began studying the manner in which we manipulate language. In the Poetics and the Rhetoric he affirms that metaphor teaches us in ways ordinary language cannot. Centuries later, the American poet Robert Frost offered his own interpretation of metaphor’s significance by affirming why it is helps us to orient ourselves in a complex environment. He was addressing a group of undergraduates at Amherst College in Massachusetts, USA.

What I am pointing out is that unless you are at home in the metaphor, unless you have had your proper poetical education in the metaphor, you are not safe anywhere. Because you are not at ease with figurative values: you don’t know the metaphor in its strength and its weakness. You don’t know how far you may expect to ride it and when it may break down with you. You are not safe in science; you are not safe in history.

(Frost 1966, 160)

George Orwell wrote eloquently about the abuse of expression in ‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946). He worries most about the ‘huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves’ and, of course, of creating precise images that might provide more information than the writer wants. In particular, Orwell notes that some politicians have mastered linguistic obfuscation (‘weasel words’ is a phrase currently in use) that critically affects how people in a democracy understand key issues. ‘But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation…’, Orwell argues, and so we all would do well to write carefully and to turn to models of the best writing we can find. This is a lesson that young people can begin to learn as early as primary school in an enjoyable way by reading and writing poetry.

Image, simile, metaphor

An image creates a picture in a person’s mind. It can be one word or several. If you say the word ‘rose’ to a class, each member will conjure up a picture of a rose in their minds. Those pictures will be different, depending on their experience with roses and even on their favourite colours.

A simile draws a comparison between two things using ‘like’ or ‘as.’ If you say, ‘the rose is as red as fire,’ then you highlight the deepness, the vividness and perhaps even the shock of that colour. If you say, ‘The girl is like a rose’ (a cliché), that simile draws a comparison between a person and a flower. If you talk about the colour of the girl’s hair (crimson perhaps), or the tone of her skin, then you also by extension make the rose as well as the girl more specific.

A metaphor starts out as a single word or image but it connects the two elements – the original Page 11 of 18

word and the new word or image – by asserting a kind of identity and, in so doing, illuminates both; for example, ‘The girl is a rose’ or ‘my mind is a hawk that soars.’ As a writer you might talk about how the girl’s scent lingers after she leaves the room, or your mind soars and then swoops after something you want to catch (a memory rather than a mouse).

Metaphors encourage us to look at the world on a deeper level that is not abstract but particular. They permeate our speech and thought (even if we might not be conscious of this) because we know that they allow us to express ourselves accurately. We say things we might not otherwise have said.

A full discussion of the significance of metaphor and how it can be used with secondary students appears in the Kroll-Evans article cited below.

Works Cited

Aristotle (1955) Aristotle Selections, WD Ross (ed), Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York.

Frost, Robert (1966) ‘Education by Poetry: A Meditative Monologue’ in A Book of Prose of Robert Frost, in FC Watkins and KF Knight (eds), Writer to Writer: Readings on the Craft of Writing, Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 155-66.

Kroll, Jeri and Steve Evans (2006) ‘Metaphor Delivers: An Integrated Approach to Teaching and Writing Poetry,’ English in Australia, Vol. 41, No 2 (July/Aug 2006), 35-59.

Merriam-Webster online Dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary.

Orwell, George ‘Politics and the English Language’ (1946) http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html

XI. Additional Resources

A. Publicity for Production of Vanishing Point and related information.

GW’S DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE AND DANCEPRESENTS

The World Premiere

of

VANISHING POINTBy Jeri Kroll

Adapted for the Stage and Directed by Leslie JacobsonWith Original Music by Roy Barber

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EVENT: The Department of Theatre & Dance presents the world premiere of VANISHING POINT by Jeri Kroll

WHEN: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, October 16th, 17th, and 18th at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, October 19th at 2 p.m.

Post-show panel on Saturday, October 18th with author Jeri Kroll, the cast, and guest panellists discussing the development of the script from the verse novel, as well as issues of eating disorders, and more. WHERE: The George Washington University’s Marvin Center Betts Theatre 800 21st Street NW Washington, DC 20052 (Two blocks from the Blue and Orange Line’s Foggy Bottom/GW Metro Stop, on the corner of 21st and I Streets NW.)

COST: General admission is $15. Admission for students and senior citizens is $10. Cash, debit/credit, check, and G World are all accepted. Ticket reservations are available online at theatredance.gwu.edu, by calling (202) 994-0995, or by visiting the box office on the night of the performance. The box office is located next to the Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre, on the first floor of the Marvin Center. Students/Seniors – $10; General Admission – $15Tickets: https://www.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=ff34bec866be6cd1fc69b90bd494c738

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Kris Kristlibas, Promotions Coordinator, Department of Theatre & Dance, at kirkak@gwu.edu

Theatre Program

Excerpts appear below.

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Vanishing Point explores the interior and exterior life of Diana, a nineteen-year-old girl living in South Australia. She struggles with the question tormenting many young people today: How do you learn to be comfortable in your own body? Living with a demanding father, a mother who dabbles in charismatic religion and a brother with Down syndrome, Diana feels pressured to be the family savior, to be “perfect.” In her need to control something in her life, she retreats into the self-destructive world of anorexia and bulimia. The play takes us on Diana’s journey into a place of healing and hope. Theatre is a medium of metaphor – nothing and no one are exactly what they seem to be: brick walls are really painted flats; actors assume new identities as aristocrats, peasants – even animals or plants. So, poetry – another medium grounded in metaphor – seems perfectly suited to the stage. Jeri Kroll’s rich, evocative language enables us to examine sometimes painful situations without looking away. Vanishing Point has evolved through workshops and staged readings over the past four years, during which time Roy Barber’s original music has been added to Leslie Jacobson’s stage adaptation. The result of this process, Vanishing Point onstage, seems to exist at the intersection of acting, musical theatre, movement, and language.

Artistic Staff

Author: Born in New York City, Jeri Kroll holds an honours degree from Smith College, an MA from the University of Warwick (UK) and a PhD from Columbia University. She has published over twenty books for adults and young people, including poetry, picture books and novels, as well as refereed essays and edited collections. Her most recent are Workshopping the Heart: New and Selected Poems (Wakefield 2013) and Research Methods in Creative Writing (Palgrave Macmillan 2013), co-edited with Graeme Harper. She is the inaugural Dean of Graduate Research at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, and Professor of English and Creative Writing. The verse novel, Vanishing Point, will be available for sale after the performances.

Adaptor/Director: Leslie Jacobson has spent close to 40 years producing, writing, directing, and teaching theatre committed to addressing societal challenges and to giving voice to people often marginalized by the dominant culture. She is the Founding Artistic Director of Horizons Theatre. Under her leadership from 1977 to 2007, Horizons introduced Washington audiences to over 60 new plays and playwrights through fully staged productions, and another 50 through public staged readings. Jacobson has been nominated for the Helen Hayes Award in the category of Outstanding Director three times. She is a Professor of Theatre at The George Washington University, joining the faculty in 1977, and serving as Department Chair for 13 years. She is the director of Graduate Studies for the one-year intensive MFA program in Classical Acting offered in partnership with the Shakespeare Theatre Company. For the past 12 years, Jacobson has been running a cultural exchange program between GW and the Bokamoso Youth Centre in the impoverished rural township of Winterveldt, South Africa. Jacobson first met Jeri Kroll when on a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship in South Australia in 2008.

Composer/Music Director: Roy Barber is a composer, lyricist, and playwright, who has worked extensively with area theatres, including Horizons. He was on the faculty of St. Andrews Episcopal School for 25 years before retiring last year; and has been a guest artist/teacher at GW. He has developed his strong relationship with Bokamoso and the community of Winterveldt since the late 1990s, dedicating himself to helping youth, and to using the arts as a force for positive change. Barber organized the first trip of Bokamoso youth and staff to DC in 2003, and this exchange has been thriving ever since. He is President of the Bokamoso Youth Foundation, a not-for-profit organization which supports the programs of the Centre and provides scholarships for qualified youth.

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Notes from the Adapter/Director (Leslie Jacobson)

Plays are not written – they are re-written.’ That is a saying, old and true. This project of adapting Vanishing Point into a play, now receiving its world premiere, has been percolating in development for several years. When, as a Fulbright Senior Research Fellow in Australia in 2008, I first heard a few of the poems which Jeri Kroll was creating for a novel in verse, I was struck by their imagery, the evocative and lyrical language meant to be spoken aloud. The story’s focus on Diana’s relationship to her body, and how that relationship deeply affects every other relationship in her life; and the resonances contemporary girls and women (and men) experience from Diana’s struggles, spoke to my own earlier explorations into this topic in a play I wrote with Vanessa Thomas, The Body Project.

As her novel took shape, Jeri and I were able to develop it into a stage version, through experimental readings with GW students in 2010; a staged reading at the Kennedy Center’s Page-to-Stage Festival in 2011; and a professional workshop in 2012, where some movement and music were added.

There are things that theatre can do – by giving body as well as voice to characters in a story – which transform emotions, ideas, and other insubstantial but powerful forces, into concrete and defined beings onstage. The self-destructive voice inside Diana’s head becomes the dangerous character, Ana; and Di’s struggle becomes visceral, leaping off the page into dramatic action. I believed it was vital to maintain the centrality of the language and images that fill Jeri’s work, and to develop a unique style of presentation that retains the novel’s narrative voice, while still presenting the characters’ interactions directly, with honesty and passion.

Some of the most lyrical and deeply felt moments have been set to Roy Barber’s evocative music, adding another powerful performance element to the play. What has evolved over the past several years reflects the contributions of many theatre artists, students and professionals to whom I am deeply grateful for their part in bringing Vanishing Point to life. Vanessa Thomas’s first explorations into movement took us a giant step forward. Terri Allen, who passed away far too soon this past August, first gave body and voice to Lacey and Mariska, brilliantly.

For tonight’s production, I want to particularly thank Isabelle Anderson and Stacey Dawson Stearns for their invaluable contributions to the physical movement in the piece. Together, all the theatre artists bring this world premiere, the first fully produced version of Jeri Kroll’s Vanishing Point, to you, the audience. You are the final element necessary in our experiment. We hope you find the play a meaningful experience. Then our experiment will be a success!

Author’s Statement (Jeri Kroll)

Vanishing Point poses the question: ‘How do you learn to be comfortable in your own body?’ Nineteen-year-old Diana’s obsession with body image comes partly from the outside, from ‘expectations about how young women should look. But the pressure also pushes from within, born of her complex family situation that makes her strive for perfection, seeking refuge in female role models from the mythic past. Vanishing Point also explores the intimate relationship between human beings and animals. The exhilaration Diana feels when horse riding allows her to reconnect with a body weakened by anorexia. She finds that living in the moment instead of watching herself offers her a way to become whole again. So Vanishing Point embodies Diana’s two first loves – horses and a young Irishman named Conor.

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A word about form. A verse novel inhabits a precarious space between the lyric and narrative. Plot and character drive a story forward, but poetry enhances its depth. Since poetry is an oral as well as a written medium too, it translates well to the stage. Audiences might expect the language to be challenging but it can be as straightforward or as complex as human experience. In Vanishing Point the poetry reflects Diana’s obsession with self, just as it brings out her ambivalence about her family and Conor. And finally, it helps her to understand that what threatens us can also energise us.

Introduction to the Dramatic Production at the 47th Annual Kennedy Centre American College Theater Festival (January 2-6 2015)

ABOUT THE KENNEDY CENTER AMERICAN COLLEGE THEATER FESTIVAL (from website)Developed in 1969 by Roger L. Stevens, the Kennedy Center’s founding Chairman, the KCACTF encourages and celebrates the finest and most diverse theatrical productions from colleges and universities nationwide. Through the regional and national festivals, the KCACTF celebrates the achievements of theater programs, individual students, and faculty of colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Vanishing Point was one of eight productions selected from 63 entries in the region to be showcased in a full MainStage Production by George Washington University in Cleveland’s Playhouse Square on 5 January 2015.

See Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival 47 full program and, in particular, page 9, for a de-scription of Vanishing Point http://www.kcactf2.org/wp-content/themes/kcactf2/images/ACTF-PROGRAM-2015-FINAL-Small.pdf

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

December 17, 2014

47th Annual Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Welcomes 1,100 Students and Faculty from Colleges and Universities from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Southwest New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia at the Region Two Festival January 2–6, 2015

Co-Hosted by Cleveland State University and Playhouse Square, Ohio

Full-Scale Productions Presented by: Albright College, Alvernia University, Carroll Community

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College, Cleveland State University, George Washington University, Grove City College, Slippery Rock University, and University of Toledo.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.)—Cleveland State University and Playhouse Square will host 1,100 students and faculty from colleges and universities from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, southwest New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia at the Region Two festival of the 47th annual Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) January 2–6, 2015. This is the first of eight consecutive, weekly celebrations of excellence and achievement in theater in higher education. Individual participants and full-scale productions are eligible for awards in a number disciplines recognizing excellence in the art and craft of theater. Individual awardees and representatives from selected productions will be brought to Washington, D.C. for an expense-paid trip to the national festival April 13–18, 2015 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. A comprehensive listing of awardees will be announced in mid-March 2015.

Productions invited to be showcased at the Region Two festival are presented by Albright College, Alvernia University, Carroll Community College, Cleveland State University, George Washington University, Grove City College, Slippery Rock University, and University of Toledo. The eight invited productions were selected from 63 eligible productions from the region.

B. Further Reading on Poetry and on Verse Novels/Adaptation:

Kroll, Jeri and Leslie Jacobson (2014) ‘A Fine Balancing Act: Adapting the Verse Novel to the Stage’ New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, 11: 2, 182-201 [in print and online].

Kroll, Jeri (2012) ‘From page to stage: A case study of transforming a verse novel’ The Encounters: Place, Situation, Context Papers—the refereed proceedings of the 17th Conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs, 1-12. Available from http://www.aawp.org.au/the_encounters_place_situation_context_papers.

Kroll, Jeri (2010) ‘From now to once upon a time: Reading the Book of Myths,’ third paper in the Icarus extended panel. The Strange Bedfellows or Perfect Partners Papers: the refereed proceedings of the 15th conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs, 1-11. Available from http://www.aawp.org.au/publications/the-strange-bedfellows-or-perfect-partners-papers/.

Kroll, Jeri (2010) ‘Strange Bedfellows or Compatible Partners: the problem of genre in the twenty-first century verse novel’ The Strange Bedfellows or Perfect Partners Papers: the refereed proceedings of the 15th conference of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs, 1-10. Available from http://www.aawp.org.au/publications/the-strange-bedfellows-or-perfect-partners-papers/.

Kroll, Jeri (2010) ‘Climate Change’ TEXT Special Issue No 7: ‘The ERA era: creative writing as research’ Donna Lee Brien, Nigel Krauth and Jen Webb (eds) (October), 1-6. Available from http://www.textjournal.com.au.

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Reading on Eating Disorders

Popular Press

Angelina Hoidra (played Diana in George Washington University production) 24 October 2014 http://www.glossyfinds.com/ntering-the-world-of-eating-disorders/

‘How Do You Feel About Your Body?’ Shaun Dreisbach, 137-143, Glamour magazine’s first survey in thirty years about American women’s body images. Available online at http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2014/10/body-image-how-do-you-feel-about-your-body. Question: Did they only survey Glamour readers? It isn’t clear from the article.

Visual

Sneak Peek of Vanishing Point (George Washington University production) http://vimeo.com/109370684

Useful websites

Australia

National Eating Disorder Collaboration: helpful information about eating disorders, research, and treatment providers in Australia http://www.nedc.com.au/

Beyond Blue http://www.beyondblue.org.au

Statewide Eating Disorders Services in South Australia for assessment and treatment: http://www.sahealth.sa.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/public+content/sa+health+internet/health+services/eating+disorder+service/about+statewide+eating+disorder+service

United States

http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org

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