Entering the downstairs stage room at the Chopin Theater can make a person feel a bit like they’ve stepped into a different decade. The red walls and mismatched light fixtures are complemented by padded old-fashioned furniture, some of which faces the old man playing jazz piano on the stage and some of which faces the opposite wall for any guests interested in stimulating conversation.
The ambience gives the room a salon atmosphere, and on Wednesday night, the room played host to the Guild Complex Prose Awards, an annual award show put on by the Guild Complex, a literary organization devoted to supporting diverse and emerging voices through performances and readings. Six semi-finalists read their work aloud to an appreciative crowd and then both a non-fiction and a fiction prize were awarded.
The winning non-fiction piece was by Robert Hobson, a burly 22-year veteran of the US Army. When he read his piece, “Camel in the wire,” his delivery style was terse and unadorned, but within moments, audience members were riveted by his retelling of the taut, anguish-filled last moments of a camel that blundered into barbed wire at his base 22 miles from the border in Kuwait.
Hobson said the piece was a combination of two other pieces, because “some of the stuff was just too raw and when I combined them, I was able to push past some of the feelings.” It took him two years to write it, but he said he thought it was his strongest piece and he chose to send it to this competition because he wanted it to be read in a literary setting rather than in a military magazine.
Billy Lombardo was the big winner for fiction with his piece “All of our crosses.” A slim, tidy man who wore a necktie to the event, his reading style was quiet and understated, and his story about a man helping his elderly father shovel was both poignant and funny in the way it portrayed the ways parents can drive their children crazy while still inspiring profound levels of sympathy.
Lombardo said he was motivated to submit this piece because he’d written it recently and he knew he still wanted to work on it. He also won an audience award for his reading of it.
The goal of the contest is to “give space to emerging writers, underserved writers, and underserved audiences,” Kimberly Dixon, executive director of the Guild Complex, said. Dixon said they were most interested in pieces “if the work gets the listener or the reader to think differently about the world or to see the world in a new way and particularly if it uncovers something that might not normally get attention or get a voice.”
“The whole idea is create something that’s not currently out there,” Mike Puican, Guild board president, said. “We’re looking at blending poetry and theater, we’re looking at blending literature and music, or sometimes non-art mediums.”
The Guild Complex has two poetry performance programs this weekend, while visitors to the Chopin Theater can look forward to performances of the Nutcracker Thursday through Sunday through December and a magic show late Friday nights.
The Chopin Theatre is a gem, truly. Go check them out. They have shows all the time and owner Zygmunt Dyrkacz would love to talk to you about art.
If you're interested in the Guild Complex group, you can find more information about their events here.
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