Holles Street Maternity Hospital

Yesterday, T. Ryder Smith dashed over to The Radio Foundation in between performances for War Horse at Lincoln Center. He brilliantly performed an excerpt from the most difficult chapter of Ulysses, Oxen of the Sun. Stylistically, Joyce slaloms through the history of English literature in this episode and it is often the chapter where readers throw the novel against the wall in desperation. T Ryder Smith performed an excerpt written in the style of the seventeenth century poet John Milton as the drunken students chided Dedalus about his supposed sexual exploits.We were discussing how once you have the answer keys, the clues, to Joyce's references, stylistic choices, and plot points, the episode opens up like a beautiful flower and you breath it in. If you do the work to understand the text, and read it and then perform it, the experience is like having a conversation with a brilliant friend and finally understanding what he is saying. It's a rush of artistic and intellectual pleasure and understanding.

The episode takes place at Hollis Street Maternity Hospital where Bloom and Dedalus finally meet joining the drunken medical students as they all wait for the birth of Baby Purefoy. My first experience with Ulysses was a ten year old girl in Dublin waiting in the lobby of Hollis Street for my aunt to finish work. She was a matron at the hospital and would take me to see plays by my first literary heros Oscar Wilde and John B Keane starring those wonderful actors who shaped my theatrical consciousness like Robert O'Mahoney and Mick Lally. While waiting in the lobby, I would watch the tours of American tourists making their Bloomsday pilgrimage to the site of this most difficult episode as Joyce birthed his place into the consciousness of English literature alongside the long laboring Mrs. Purefoy.

On Monday, John Lithgow recorded another difficult excerpt from Oxen of the Sun, written in the style of Charles Lamb whose version of Ulysses, was Joyce's first experience with the Greek legend while a student at Belvedere College in Dublin. This year, several students at Belvedere are recording the Nestor episode of Ulysses as Stephen Dedalus tries to teach his students the John Milton poem Lycidas. Radio Bloomsday veteran Jim Fletcher, that fantastic performer of classic twentieth century literature, will be performing that Milton poem live from the WBAI studios on June 16.

The ethereal Kate Valk recorded the birth of Baby Purefoy for us a few years ago. This year, she reads an excerpt from Cyclops with Jim Fletcher and one of my favorite WB Yeats poem's The Stolen Child which had the whole studio in rapt attention as she performed it. Join us only six days away and listen in live to Radio Bloomsday on WBAI in New York City and KPFK in Los Angeles and on wbai.org anywhere in the world.

Ulysses in Downtown

Every year, we pre-record some excerpts of Radio Bloomsday to make it easier to switch between segments during our seven hour live broadcast. Today we recorded a thirty minute piece from the Circe episode of Ulysses with three legendary downtown artists : Charles Busch(above), T. Ryder Smith and Aaron Beall.

Joyce bends together several realities throughout the drug fueled orgy that is Circe. Bella turns into Bello, a man, and in turn turns Bloom into Ruby Cohen, awhore/scullery maid. Chock full of scatological references, Circe is one of the most controversial episodes in the book. Zero Mostel starred as Leopold Bloom in one of the most successful adaptations of Ulysses which focused almost completely on the Circe episode. That play, Ulysses in Nighttown, was nominated for several Tony Awards on Broadway in 1974. T Ryder mentioned that that production which he attended was one of his favorite theatrical memories of all time.

Circe is written in the form of a play, as Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom drunkenly wander through Dublin's Red light district. We recorded the section where Bloom explores his perverse sexual fantasies under the tutelage of whoremistress Madame Bella Cohen. The playwright and performer and novelist Charles Busch essayed the role of Bella and brought a disarming sweetness to the character of this famous sadist that was devastating and unique. Charles' new play The Divine Sister opens at Soho Rep this September. The chameleon T. Ryder Smith who is presently playing Hitler, Ronald Regan and Queen Elizabeth (pictured above) in Sara Ruhl's Passion Play read the narration and hilariously about a half dozen other roles. Aaron Beall (below with Molly), the founder of Nada and the New York International Fringe Festival played a stripped down and exposed, quintessentially New York Bloom.

Below is a short excerpt from Circe, as Bella/Bello chastises Bloom. Tune in on Wednesday, June 16th around 10pm to hear these superstars perform the entire piece.

BELLO: (Savagely) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old. You're in for it this time! I'll make you remember me for the balance of your natural life.

(His forehead veins swollen, his face congested)

I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter.

(He belches)

And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you.

(He twists her arm. Bloom squeals, turning turtle.)

BLOOM: Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!