Gone Dishin’ made it to a host of happenings around town, from Iris Delahunty (pictured with artist in residence Denise Parri) at White Gallery, to local Persian-born author and poet Roya Hakakian at Yale, to the latest on the stage. She has all the scuttlebutt.
Irena Delahunty at White Space
New Haven citizenry may well be a paradigm for the mantra of life-long learning. With no shortage of venues for the quest, another has emerged. White Space Gallery opened its fall Saturday morning lecture series with a presentation by artist, poet and sculptor Dr. Irena Delahunty. A standing room only audience listened, in rapt attention, as she discussed her latest works and poetry, The Prayers of the Mer-People — ¬¶A Soul’s Journey to the Sacred.
The creations of these works were inspired by the artist’s mother, an Olympic swimmer who was tragically and suddenly incapacitated. While her mother lay ill, Ireana briefly left her mother’s side to attend an exhibit of her work in Provincetown, Mass.. It was during this time, inspired by the sea, fishing nets, shells and driftwood, the “Mer-People” were born. “The mermaid of my musings became the mer-woman born within my grief — ¬¶Gradually a series emerged as enfleshed images — ¬¶.The Prayers of the Mer-People became icons representing wandering and wounded hearts as they evolve and emerge”.
The artist holds degrees in Divinity from Yale, in psychology from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, an MFA from NYU, and an RN from the Queens Hospital Center School of Nursing. She uses all of them in her work as chaplain, psychologist and art therapist at the Alzheimer’s Resource Center in Plantsville, CT.
While you probably will not have an opportunity to share her work with the artist, there is ample time to see it and to sign up for notices of future shows that allow public and personal access to the living artists and their works. The White Space Gallery is a wonderful addition to the Cultural Capital of Connecticut. You can stop in without a major time commitment; it is always worth the visit!
Roya Hakakian at Yale
Every New Haven day presents an opportunity to expand our horizons. Last Thursday, we were privileged to hear Roya Hakakian, who is a fellow at Whitney Humanities Center at Yale. She had just returned from participation on a panel at a major Anti-Defamation League event in New York; she was brimming with new thoughts and ideas. As she explained to her full lecture hall, the good news was that this would be the first time for the talk; the bad news was that it would be unrehearsed. She was alarmed that the world’s total focus was on Iran’s nuclear capacity; she considered it an upsetting distraction from attention to the rest of the newsworthy issues of her native country. Born and raised in a Jewish family in Tehran, Roya came to the United States in May 1985 on political asylum. She lives in Connecticut. The audience was totally enthralled with her tales of the official Iranian attitude toward Jews. In the best of times, it was frightening but dismissive.
Her credentials are impeccable. She is a founding member of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and serves on the board of Refugees International. She speaks on the subject of the Middle East and human rights and has appeared on CSPAN-Book TV, CNN International, CBS Early Show, and Now with Bill Moyers. Her memoir of growing up a Jewish teenager in post-revolutionary Iran, Journey from the Land of No (Crown), was Barnes & Noble’s Pick of the Week, Ms. Magazine’s Must Reads of the Summer, Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of the Year, and Elle Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2004. It also received the Persian Heritage Foundation’s Latifeh Yarshater Literary Award. Journey from the Land of No has been translated into several languages and is available in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain.
Her poetry has consistently appeared in numerous anthologies around the world, including La Regle Du Jeu, the Pen Anthology of Contemporary Iranian Literature, and the forthcoming W.W. Norton’s Contemporary Voices of the Eastern World: An Anthology of Poems. She contributes to the Persian Literary Review and served as the poetry editor of Par Magazine for six years. Her opinion columns, essays, and book reviews appear in English-language publications, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal among them. She is also a contributor to the Weekend Edition of NPR’s All Things Considered.
The seminars of the Center for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism have succeeded in attracting “regulars” from both town and gown. It was interesting to note that Bob Fishman, executive director of the CT State Jewish Community Relations Council, traveled from Hartford for the opportunity that we have on a casual, local everyday basis.
While Sydney Perry, Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, found a table on which to perch, Fishman had to settle for a limited view from the hallway.
Pick an hour, pick a day, log on to the Yale Bulletin and choose a lecture. You owe it to yourself.
Theater, Everywhere
On that day, it was an easy ride over to the Haskins Laboratories for the opening of their new art show, available to the public during normal business hours. And there was still time to get to the opening of Yale Rep’s The Mistakes Madeline Made, a dramatic and farcical ode to the ability to organize things; to paraphrase one character, that ability is “our first line of defense against the whole world”. The actors are terrific! If you can organize your schedule, you have until Nov. 18th to see it.
Long Wharf’s current production of Rocket to the Moon is a too lengthy, but familiar story of human temptations and moral values. David Marguiles’ portrayal of Mr. Prince eases the slow pace. Assuming you have your calendar in order after having seen Madeline’s Mistakes, you are given an extra day to go to Long Wharf; the show will be on Stage I until November 19th.
If by Sunday you are not exhausted, check out the Cabaret at Chow. Baby Jane Dexter was there this week; look forward to Ann Tofflemire and Andy Rubenoff in the next few weeks.
