Rita Bozi Plus, I am deeply in love.
She wrote, produced, toured and performed in collective creations for theatre and taught part time at Langara College in the Shiatsu Practitioner Program. She is still receiving royalties for 52 Pick Up, a play she co-wrote, co-produced, co-directed and acted in, which has been performed by 8 national and international theatre companies in 5 countries, including England, Australia, New Zealand and New York City. The play received the Chapters’ Best Text Award at the Montreal Fringe in 2000 and appeared at the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary. Seeking a change of pace, Rita left Vancouver after 14 years and decided to move her life to Calgary to work with One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre for a season. Where we met, fell in love and eventually married. Upon moving to Calgary, she began to realize that her heart was no longer on stage but in her studio working one on one with clients. She continues to appear periodically in films shot in Calgary (most recently A Problem With Fear, Chasing Freedom, A Word of Honour, and Lies My Mother Told Me). Her main focus, however, lies in her private practice and advancing her knowledge. Rita Bozi is a Certified BodyTalk Practitioner and her toolbox further includes Three in One Concepts, Craniosacral Therapy, SomatoEmotional Release, Visceral Manipulation, Orthopedic Evaluation, Reiki, Compassionate Communication Techniques, The Alexander Method, Accelerated Learning Techniques and a comprehensive knowledge of the body through her studies in Pilates, Hatha and Bikram Yoga, Vipassana and a thirteen year career as both a classical and modern dancer. Rita has several published articles on alternative health care which have appeared in Rising Women Magazine, Connections and in the HWEL Newsletter on the desnoyers-schuler website. She is a contributor to Calgary’s FFWD Weekly both as a writer and a photographer, in which she has had a Photo Series, a Photo Feature and several articles. She has currently turned her attention to writing short stories and has been recently published in the online fiction magazine Pages of Stories. She is the proud owner of a Smart Car. For more about Rita visit: Allister and Carolyn Cameron My folks invested a lot of money in my education and they never once balked at the idea that I was wasting it by becoming an artist. Well … once: in my final year of high school, on parent-teacher night, my folks expressed some misgivings to my art teacher, who replied “all honest work is honourable”. They quoted that remark back to me so many times I became sick of it!
My mother has served as President of the Women’s Teacher’s Union, The West Elgin Skating Club and the Port Stanley Festival Theatre; she has been co-chair of the speaker’s committee of the Women’s Canadian Club, has hosted a cable television show and has dressed up in a woolen dress on hot days at the Bakus Page House to teach children about history. My father has been President and District Governor of the Lion’s Club, head of the building committee at the Port Stanley Festival Theatre, a church elder, a farmer and a bureaucrat responsible for arranging loans for farmers via the Farm Credit Corporation. Together they have done more to build the community of Dutton, Ontario than any two people alive. I remember when I was five years old how I would go to town with my father to “get a few things”. Getting a few things inevitably turned any trip to town into a three hour journey while dad went to five different farms to sell raffle tickets, dropped something at the Lion’s Club and dropped by the ball park to check on sales at the fundraising hot-dog booth. I recall sitting in the car reading a comic book while I watched him march down the street, talking to every second person he met and thinking to myself “my Dad knows everybody in the whole wide world”.
Vipassana Meditation
It is this observation-based, self-exploratory journey to the common root of mind and body that results in a balanced mind full of love and compassion. Life becomes characterized by increased awareness, non-delusion, self-control and peace. I am self-taught, having picked up meditation techniques from Rita, from books, from a brief flirtation with a Sanga (meditation centre) and from a short three day course, but its high time that I took a more detailed course. Vipassana is normally taught at ten-day residential courses during which participants follow a prescribed Code of Discipline, learn the basics of the method, and practice sufficiently to experience its beneficial results. While these courses require dedication and commitment, they are entirely free and ask only for a donation of whatever you can afford. It’s a wonder I have never been. Pema Chodron I have had the privilege of reading: • When Things Fall Apart
Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.”
For more about Pema Chodron visit: www.shambhala.org Nonviolent Communication
When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed, rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover that we can really understand and intuit what the other party needs, even when they themselves cannot articulate it. I have found NVC useful in helping to diffuse aggressive situations, begin negotiations on the right foot, open up frank dialogue and even help others when they are feeling emotionally tender. On a business level, it helps me get what I want: once someone feels their needs have been heard, they are invariably willing to compromise and, because I understand their needs, I am usually motivated to help them. So everyone wins. On a personal level, I am a better listener, I remember more detail and every conversation is more pleasant. Nonviolent Communication was developed by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D. and is book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life Published by PuddleDancer Press You can find out more about at www.cnvc.org Sharon Pollock
She’s no young pup anymore, and as one of our nations most respected playwrights she could have gone to many, many places that were much, much easier to travel in. But that would hardly be Sharon Pollock. Sharon has a pretty good website too: Bob Dylan, Bruce Cockburn and Tom Waits
One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre
So it was that my first SM gig was in a foreign language: Scottish. I insisted on being called Assistant Director, not SM, and just as well because for the next few years I was Assistant Director, Stage Manager, Production Manager, Assistant Tour Manager, Assistant Playwright and general dogsbody. I continued doing side projects with Michael through the Shiny Beast Collective and my own projects at The Art Ranch, but it was the fabulous theatrical family of One Yellow Rabbit, more than any other artists, who have shaped my understanding of, and appreciation for, edgy experimental theatre. Thank you guys. You can find all about OYR at: www.oyr.org |
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