I'm at a very interesting event hosted by Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA: it's called BIARI which stands for Brown International Advanced Research Institute (yep - full-on!). I'm in the "theatre and civil society stream". It's intense & fascinating, & also what's really nice is that there are quite a few Magdalenas around.

I am in Pondicherry, India for the Tantidhatri festival - the first Magdalena festival in India, organised by Parvathy Baul (with an incredible army of volunteers).

on monday 4th january, while most of the country was still on holiday, a group of us gathered at janet's for a database party. the purpose of this party was to learn how to use our shiny new CiviCRM online membership database. this is the system that we installed in conjunction with this new site, & already it's made a great improvement in how we manage all our contact information, and communicate with our members.

last week the newsletter went to the printer & a small group of dedicated stuffers gathered at madeline's on wednesday night to get it stuffed & in the post. if you're a newsletter subscriber, it should be in your letterbox by now : ) & if you're not a subscriber, you can download the pdf (1.2MB).

thanks to all our subscribers for supporting this valuable newsletter & hope you enjoy the latest issue.

The theme of this year's Transit is peripheries - of all kinds, geographic, artistic, cultural, etc. in my presentation i talked about my own peripherical work, on the edge of theatre & also on the edge of digital art. i also talked about peripherals - things you attach to your computer to expand its capabilities such as a printer, web cam, external hard-drive, etc. periphical things have important roles to play in relationship to the centre(s) as well as to each other.

packed festival days continue! after giving my own presentation yesterday, as well as helping with projection for gabi's show earlier in the day & eva's show the night before, i'm having a quiet day today to upload & offload rather than try to take more in.

another full day at Transit - trying to get an early night but already it's half past midnight. dawn (pictured resplendent at the bar, below) is now horizontal, while madeline has returned from her bar shift & we are discussing the performances from this evening. i can't discuss & write at the same time ... more later ...

I am in Holstebro, Denmark at Odin Teatret for the 6th Transit International Festival of Women's Performance. Organised by Julia Varley approximately every 3 years since 1992, the Transit Festival is a highlight of the Magdalena calendar. It's a great coming-together of women theatre makers from all over the world, for an intense period of workshops, work-in-progress showings, discussions, performances and of course a lot of great conversations over good food & drink : )

as the gathering is all about responding, giving feedback and constructive criticism about our work, we naturally gather feedback about the event itself. we do this via a written evaluation form (or in any other form people want to give it to us) & i'm now collating the feedback received thus far.

Hard to believe, I know, but there are some life skills that i have never mastered. I cannot click my fingers, or roll my tongue (my siblings teased me mercilessly about this), and I could not hula-hoop - that is, until last night. The undoubted highlight of the Gathering was my hula-hoop break-through, the sudden pelvic epiphany that enabled me to keep the hoop rolling gracefully around my gently swaying hips. The frock may have had something to do with it, and the angle of the bunny ears, but now that I've got the hang of it I don't know why I was so incapable before.