A Potable Joyce - P.A.W. Print - Philadelphia Arts Writers

A Potable Joyce: A Watered-Down Version of Ulysses
The Story of James Joyce and His Manuscript
by Sara Hoover, Philadelphia Writers Fellow

Sebastienne Mundheim with the Ulysses book and Leopold Bloom puppet. photo, Alastair Smeaton

Using a boat that becomes a loom, a shadowy and red-eyed Cyclops, a pub inside a cigar box, live music, shadow puppets, and actors, A Potable Joyce: A Watered-Down Version of Ulysses is a three-tiered adventure story.

Sebastienne Mundheim is the creator and storyteller who weaves Homer's hero Odysseus, James Joyce's hero Leopold Bloom, and Joyce himself together into a theatrical performance for all ages. This lively performance, featuring Sebastienne Mundheim, Michael Ewing, Janette Hough-Fertig, McKenna Kerrigan, and Elliott Levin, has been performed over fifty times in the United States, including the Bloomsday Weekends 2002, 2003, and 2004, Philadelphia Fringe Festival 2002, and as part of the Excellence in Arts and Education Celebration at the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in Harrisburg, 2001.

Starting as a painter and writer, Sebastienne Mundheim created art alone in her studio. In 1995, she began working with inner-city kids providing interdisciplinary education programs through the Rosenbach Museum and Library and the Arthur Ross Gallery. She taught a bookbinding project in conjunction with the Exquisite Books exhibit at the Rosenbach Museum.

Having already used a Lewis Carroll book as part of the bookbinding project, Mundheim wanted to try a more challenging text. "The Ulysses manuscript is the Rosenbach's most prized possession," she said, adding, "I approached the Rosenbach and asked if could I combine it with my bookmaking project and they said sure." Mundheim wanted to use performance and storytelling as a way to introduce Joyce's manuscript to children. By incorporating movement and vocabulary, A Potable Joyce became "a more interactive and invested way children could connect with Joyce's Ulysses, rather that just looking at the manuscript."


	photo, Liz Linder

With her arts-based collaborative show, discussion and hands-on activities for children, Mundheim breathed life into the original Ulysses manuscript and the Rosenbach, once considered a stuffy, dusty museum. She had created many museum-based shows for both children and adults, but found this project challenging. Asking herself what is interesting about a manuscript, Mundheim thought the idea of looking at a manuscript might appeal to scholars and collectors, but not to kids. She came up with the idea of authorship. "A single person doesn't write, but has support. What does that look like? How do I make a show about a writer?" She asked. Without a theatre background, Mundheim read chapters of Ulysses, and took what was interesting to her and translated that to others, a recipe for an informing and interesting show.

In 1998, Mundheim had a small budget with which to hire performers, make sets and do ten shows. Originally held onsite at the Rosenbach Museum, the show was twenty minutes long. The children would tour and discuss the manuscript, and create their own manuscripts. What began as simple storytelling and movement workshop now has digital media and visuals. For the actors, it became about how to perform with the props. Mundheim explains, "It was hard for the actors at first to work with the puppets. I explained to them that they needed to learn the movement and visual images first and then they could make [the show] their own." Five years later, the performance became well crafted. Although put in the children's theatre category, the show attracts all ages. Mundheim continues, "It's so very visually stimulating to three year olds with the music and puppets and appealing to scholars for its intelligence and insight." So appealing that the show has outgrown its space at the Rosenbach and is now performed at the Trinity Church two blocks away. No matter where it is housed, A Potable Joyce still ends with "See how Joyce would script his manuscript with a hand you script. Can you script a manuscript?" The dialogue is not just entertaining, but commutes the audience's attention to the bookmaking workshops held afterwards.

The year 2004 marks the 100th Anniversary of "Bloomsday," the fictional day on which James Joyce's Ulysses takes place and the same year A Potable Joyce became an internationally recognized tour. It also signifies a year that marked tragedy before triumph for Mundheim. In January 2004, four months before setting sail for Ireland for a one-month tour of the show, the set vanished from its storage with no budget left. "The old set I built by myself almost entirely. The set was incredibly precious. It was a piece of art- a sculpture installation by itself." A call for help went out and over forty volunteers, with varying degrees of skills, responded, including people as far away as Michigan and Los Angeles.


photo, Liz Linder

Mundheim knew exactly what she wanted the second time around. She recalled, "Rebuilding the set was tedious and moving. The craftsmanship increased and was so beautiful. Having all the volunteers come together was incredible on so many levels. It was very heartwarming." Out of an incredible misfortune came a beautiful, polished set. It may have taken five years to get here, but Mundheim says, "Things that are good take time."

A Potable Joyce set sail for Ireland and performed thirty-four shows all over the country, including Dublin, Galway, and County Cork. "It was a different experience with an audience of 120 children in a real theatre. It's much darker and we couldn't see audience members' faces," recalled Mundheim. In the intimate setting of the Rosenbach, the actors were able to tell the story to specific audience members with never more than sixty people occupying the space. There were other differences as well. "The bookmaking workshops afterwards were very different," Mundheim explained. "Every kid in Ireland has drama in school. None of them were shy about singing their script [and] were fearless about performing. In discussion, the older kids asked a lot of questions about how things were made." Originally a fifty-minute show in the U.S., Potable became a two and a half hour presentation in Ireland.

A Potable Joyce will be going back to Ireland in autumn, 2004 and February 2005. It will be moving into a larger Philadelphia venue during the autumn. Mundheim said that besides performing the show live, she has been commissioned to do a television show.