Radio Features for Monday, June 11, 2012: Erich Haygun and Steve Subrizi

New and Improved: workshop leader and featured poet Erich Haygun

New and Improved: workshop leader and featured poet Erich Haygun

FEATURED POET: Facilitator Erich Haygun has performed all over North America, specializing in unconventional venues such as condemned theaters, abandoned zoo cages and doubled-booked DIY punk basements for crowds that never expected to break a sweat over poetry. In addition to over a decade of firsthand experience, Erich is also a student of public speaking and performance, from speaking/ coaching speakers for The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, to working behind the scenes on stage shows, plays, lectures and internationally touring improv comedy basketball teams.

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION: Erich will lead a workshop designed to focus on encouraging participants to try new things with their performances. Participants are encouraged to bring a piece of writing they’d like to read for a receptive and responsive audience, or something well-rehearsed they’d like to try in a different light, or ideally, both. Through a combination of unorthodox ice breakers, spontaneous “performance prompts” and individualized attention, facilitator Erich Haygun will point participants towards creating sharp, flexible and natural presentations, whether reading on page or memorized. Writers and performers of all experience levels will benefit from the give and take of sharing constructive feedback and critical thinking about live performance in a space committed to nurturing and pushing voices to take risks.


New and Improved: musician Steve Subrizi features. Photo by Sam Teitel.

New and Improved: musician Steve Subrizi features. Photo by Sam Teitel.

FEATURED MUSICIAN: Steve Subrizi lives in Somerville and has played music and read poetry across America, by himself, along with Emerson College’s first slam poetry team The Gringo Choir (with Carrie Rudzinski, Carlos Williams, and Maxwell Kessler), with New Hampshire poetry chieftain Sam Teitel, and with his band, The Crazy Exes from Hell (with Kirsten Opstad). His poems have appeared in such places as The Scrambler, NOÖ Journal, Muzzle, and Monday Night. His e-chapbook Newly Wild Hedgehog is available from NAP, and he is live-tweeting a chapbook @fieldsofteeth, Fields of Teeth.


NEW AND IMPROVED MONDAYS is a weekly poetry and arts series on Mondays at Radio, a bar and performance space at 379 Somerville Ave., Union Square, Somerville. Doors open for the show at 6:30 p.m. and the workshop begins at 7:00. Open mic begins at 8:00. The poetry feature takes the stage at 9:00 and the visiting artist goes on at 9:30. Cover charge is $5 and the show is 21+.