Joe's Odyssey

This is my fifth academic year of performing for students at UIC and a virtual show on a beautiful fall Wednesday was my 8th total over those 5 years.

I thought it might be interesting to look back at this group of performances...

September 2016 (show 196): I hadn't started this blog yet but was able to track down an email from my host professor with student comments: 

*******I've just read my students' written assignments about your performance.  They all thought I should invite you back.  Most understood…

Now that my life around the Odyssey is virtual performances from home for the foreseeable future, I'm starting to find interesting aspects of in-person shows of which I was not aware while they were my only reality.

For instance, it's becoming clear to me that the process of getting to the performance and the unique circumstances of each space in which I performed had certain advantages in that they naturally created conditions I needed for good performances. 

I've often written about the negative aspects…

Until last spring, each of my 300 plus performances to sing about the Odyssey included an odyssey of my own. Some shows took me much farther than others but even local shows required me to leave my home, travel to another space in a different place, perform, and then return to my home. 

So I have thought (and written) quite a lot about how the travels of this bard mirror Odysseus' and what they can tell me about the relationship between storytelling, identity, journeys, and homecomings.  

The thing is…

My relationship with the National Junior Classical League began in 2012 when I performed at my first national convention at Wake Forest in North Carolina.

In 2013, the convention moved to UNLV in Las Vegas and I was there. In 2014, Emory in Atlanta, which I wrote about HERE. In 2015, Trinity University in San Antonio (very, very warm). In 2016, Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. In 2017, Troy University in Alabama, which I also wrote about HERE. In 2018, University of Miami (Ohio), which I wrote…

My first online Odyssey performance (in March, shortly after the nationwide coronavirus shutdown) was… 

Eventful. 

I wrote about it here for the wonderful Sententiae Antiquae website. 

So more than a month later as I embarked upon my second full online Odyssey performance, for a group of myth students at UIC, I was… excited but a little wary as to what virtual monsters might lurk this time around. 

My wariness turned out to be misplaced: this second performance went off without a hitch. 

I felt more…