Past the Blue Mailbox

Rhonda J Soikowski: Little Steps

Have a question or comment for Rhonda? Send us a text! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2358873/fan_mail/new] Rhonda talks about her journey through the year, the healing and motivating power of memory lane, and so much more.  A gift for the listener this holiday season. Thank you for listening to Past The Blue Mailbox Season 2.  Make sure you follow us where you get your podcasts, so you'll be notified when Season 3 is on its way. Talk soon! Rhonda out.

Adrian Prendergast: Vague, Amorphous Dreams

Have a question or comment for Rhonda? Send us a text! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2358873/fan_mail/new] Adrian & Rhonda talk about collaboration and time management, salons, line dancing dreams, accessibility of technology, purpose, the power of a supportive audience, and so much more.  Please take a moment to share Past the Blue Mailbox with your friends, and be sure to follow on your favorite streaming service to be notified of new episodes! Adrian Prendergast (they/them) is a Seattle-based director, actor, and playwright.

Deena Burke: Tango Is A Conversation

Have a question or comment for Rhonda? Send us a text! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2358873/fan_mail/new] Deena & Rhonda talk about dancing, teaching, living without regrets, and so much more.  Please take a moment to share Past the Blue Mailbox with your friends, and be sure to follow on your favorite streaming service to be notified of new episodes! Deena Burke has coached dialects, voice, speech, and text for theatres including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Old Globe Theater, Seattle Repertory Theatre, The Intiman Theatre, A Contemporary Theatre, The Shakespeare Theatre DC, Center Stage, and the McCarter Theatre. She developed the Voice and Speech component of the MFA program at the Old Globe/University of San Diego, served as Head of Voice and Speech at the Cornish College of the Arts for 14 years and has taught at the California Institute of the Arts, University of California-San Diego, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and the University of Washington. For 15 years Deena was a faculty member of the University of Delaware Professional Theatre Training Program where she taught voice, speech, text, dialects and coached and directed productions for the gradate students as well as teaching undergraduate non majors. In private practice Deena has worked with actors, lawyers, business people and other public speakers. She has published articles on voice, speech, text and teaching pedagogy in The Voice and Speech Review, The Complete Voice and Speech Workout and the VASTA (Voice and Speech Trainer’s Association) Newsletter. She has presented workshops in cities around the country and in London, Scotland, Thailand, Japan and The Dominican Republic. In addition to working in Theatre Deena has also coached dialects for film and television. Deena’s acting credits include major roles at the Old Globe, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, A Contemporary Theatre, and the Resident Ensemble Players (REP). At the REP, Deena played the roles of Ivy in Osage Orange county, Susan in Wait Until Dark, Dorine in Tartuffe, Brooke in Noises Off, Slippy Helen in The Cripple of Inishmaan, Liz Morder in Our Country’s Good, Polly Peachum in The Threepenny Opera, Sam in the world premiere of Theresa Rebeck’s Fever, and Miss Casewell in The Mousetrap among others. You can hear her voice on ads for Alaska Airlines, Washington Mutual Bank, The Bon-Marche (Macy’s), Nordstrom and many others as well as on many CD Rom games. Deena is a graduate of The Juilliard School and loves to dance. While she has studied some ballet, tap and modern her true passion lies in social dance (not to be confused with Ballroom dancing). She has traveled the country and the world to study, dance and occasionally perform the Argentine Tango as well as salsa, bachata and Kizomba.

Dandelioness: It's Really Possible

Have a question or comment for Rhonda? Send us a text! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2358873/fan_mail/new] Chloe & Rhonda talk about letting go of the push for 'success', the healing powers of animals, liminal phases of a creative life, riding the wave, and so much more.  Please take a moment to share Past the Blue Mailbox with your friends, and be sure to follow on your favorite streaming service to be notified of new episodes! Albuquerque-based solo artist Dandelioness [https://www.dandelionessmusic.com/] is known for her radioactive falsetto and visceral, hypnotizing stage presence. Though she was raised on americana and mentored by folk greats Carrie Newcomer and Krista Detor, Dandelioness spent the first half of her life in India. In her writing, the echoes of droning ragas from her years in New Delhi well up under simple folk structures, resulting in an anomalous, otherworldly fusion of disparate cultural lilts and progressions. The sound is further mutated with infectious pop riffs, drips of her mother’s hand-me-down southern drawl, glittering with autotuned vocoder and underscored by spiraling patterns of fingerstyle guitar. Growling, crooning, generally in an outrageous getup, Dandelioness gives a vulnerable and playful show that tilts in the direction of burlesque- in her words, 'reading pages of my diary up here in front of everyone'- and often, inviting the audience to join in.  The result is turning dive bars into listening rooms across the country. Her debut album, titled “Scorpio Ballads” out via Three of Swords Records, charts the tumultuous journey of a first love torn in half by long distance. Recorded in London, England, each track on the album contributes to the overall emotional landscape. Whether it’s the mascara-stained visions of the underworld or the apocalyptic American West, Dandelioness invites listeners to explore these dark, whimsical landscapes. A musical vagabond, Dandelioness is a bohemian goth who has at various times called New Delhi, India, London, England, Taos, New Mexico, and now Albuquerque home. Since landing in New Mexico several years back, she has shared the stage or the bill with Concepto Tambor and Desert Records [https://www.facebook.com/desertrecordslabel?__cft__[0]=AZUVR7t0a6doZidrCkqulVYLQlDGP_gjFelQ5F-MlOisS2ZdKMg2e7U95UKN86TpRTOY2HfU--caCe0iHRHA8lSFDBpa8sfqUz-zn2pgA3POXSF-YgBF7y4BkUk-ihz80cC0s94IpT0_SoLy9rCXLZD4bGjkY8BPk39bCJtENjle8D6VgPLVwIUlF658hrUj38vlsfLahnd-ZscoAZMlgiGX&__tn__=-]K-y-R] artist Betty Benedeadly (Sheverb), among others. Photo Credit: Kirk Stauffer

Robin Crookall: Billboard in Tokyo

Have a question or comment for Rhonda? Send us a text! [https://www.buzzsprout.com/2358873/fan_mail/new] Robin & Rhonda talk about utilizing the work of others as artistic inspiration, the beauty of parking garages, leaving your mark, carving out time for the work, looking forward to a winter residency in Maine, the power of dance, the magic that can come from cardboard and a glue gun, and so much more.  Please take a moment to share Past the Blue Mailbox with your friends, and be sure to follow on your favorite streaming service to be notified of new episodes! ROBIN CROOKALL [http://www.robincrookall.com] My work is a blend of sculpture and photography. The subjects of my images are assembled sets of exteriors and interiors. With a collage of elements, my work creates scenes consisting of part fact and part aspect. I construct architectural models which I photograph, and print. For these models, I primarily use cardboard, tape, and hot glue; unsophisticated materials that retain a certain cogency and drabness when captured in a photo. Focusing on subjects like the corner of a room or the facade of a house, the images showcase environments that are at once familiar and safe, underwhelming and routine. What the audience sets out to experience in the photograph changes in perspective from visualizing the subject as an actual photographed place as opposed to seeing what is really its scale-model counterpart. The experience results in the viewer questioning the preexisting notions of time, memory, and place. The photograph is the ideal pedestal for these concepts, for its singular capacity for both depiction and deception. If you can’t trust your own eyes, then you can’t trust your own definition of place. And where are you supposed to exist at the plane of the image if all that grounds you, is slowly dissolving away? The pursuit of the uncanny drives me to accentuate the absurdities inherent to representation. By building and photographing models, this further creates the disorientation of space, time and scale, to create a particular kind of illusion. Not the big flashy kind, where an elephant disappears right before your eyes, but the subtlety of the card-counter, the sleight of hand, and unnoticeable graceful dance of the pickpocket. I am not a wizard, there is no real magic here. The best tricks are the ones we don’t even see.