Welcome to my blog..


"We struggle with dream figures and our blows fall on living faces." Maurice Merleau-Ponty

When I started this blog in 2011, I was in a time of transition in my life between many identities - that of Artistic Director of a company (Apocryphal Theatre) to independent writer/director/artist/teacher and also between family identity, as I discover a new family that my grandfather's name change at the request of his boss in WWII hid from view - a huge Hungarian-Slovak contingent I met in 2011. Please note in light of this the irony of the name of my recently-disbanded theatre company. This particular transition probably began in the one month period (Dec. 9, 2009-Jan. 7, 2010) in which I received a PhD, my 20 year old cat died on my father's birthday and then my father, who I barely knew, died too. I was with him when he died and nothing has been the same since. This blog is tracing the more conscious elements of this journey and attempt to fill in the blanks. I'm also writing a book about my grandmothers that features too. I'd be delighted if you joined me. (Please note if you are joining mid-route, that I assume knowledge of earlier posts in later posts, so it may be better to start at the beginning for the all singing, all dancing fun-fair ride.) In October 2011, I moved back NYC after living in London for 8 years and separated from my now ex-husband, which means unless you want your life upended entirely don't start a blog called Somewhere in Transition. In November 2011, I adopted a rescue cat named Ugo. He is lovely. As of January 2012, I began teaching an acting class at Hunter College, which is where one of my grandmothers received a scholarship to study acting, but her parents would not let her go. All things come round…I began to think it may be time to stop thinking of my life in transition when in June 2012 my stepfather Tom suddenly died. Now back in the U.S. for a bit, I notice, too, my writing is more overtly political, no longer concerned about being an expat opining about a country not my own. I moved to my own apartment in August 2012 and am a very happy resident of Inwood on the top tip of Manhattan where the skunks and the egrets roam in the last old growth forest on the island.

I am now transitioning into being married again with a new surname (Barclay-Morton). John is transitioning from Canada to NYC and as of June 2014 has a green card. So transition continues, but now from sad to happy, from loss to love...from a sense of alienation to a sense of being at home in the world.

As of September 2013 I started teaching writing as an adjunct professor at Fordham University, which I have discovered I love with an almost irrational passion. While was blessed for the opportunity, after four years of being an adjunct, the lack of pay combined with heavy work load stopped working, so have transferred this teaching passion to private workshops in NYC and working with writers one on one, which I adore. I will die a happy person if I never have to grade an assignment ever again. As of 2018, I also started leading writing retreats to my beloved Orkney Islands. If you ever want two weeks that will restore your soul and give you time and space to write, get in touch. I am leading two retreats this year in July and September.

I worked full time on the book thanks to a successful crowd-funding campaign in May 2014 and completed it at two residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Wisdom House in summer 2015. I have done some revisions and am shopping it around to agents and publishers now, along with a new book recently completed.

I now work full-time as a freelance writer, writing workshop leader, coach, editor and writing retreat leader. Contact me if you are interested in any of these services.

Not sure when transition ends, if it ever does. As the saying goes, the only difference between a sad ending and a happy ending is where you stop rolling the film.

For professional information, publications, etc., go to my linked in profile and website for Barclay Morton Editorial & Design. My Twitter account is @wilhelminapitfa. You can find me on Facebook under my full name Julia Lee Barclay-Morton. More about my grandmothers' book: The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick & Jani

In 2017, I launched a website Our Grandmothers, Our Selves, which has stories about many people's grandmothers. Please check it out. You can also contact me through that site.

In May, I directed my newest play, On the edge of/a cure, and have finally updated my publications list, which now includes an award-winning chapbook of my short-story White shoe lady, which you can find on the sidebar. I also have become a certified yoga instructor in the Kripalu lineage. What a year!

And FINALLY, I have created a website, which I hope you will visit, The Unadapted Ones. I will keep this blog site up, since it is a record of over 8 years of my life, but will eventually be blogging more at the website, so if you want to know what I am up to with my writing, teaching, retreats and so on, the site is the place to check (and to subscribe for updates). After eight years I realized, no, I'm never turning into One Thing. So The Unadapted Ones embraces the multiplicity that comprises whomever I am, which seems to always be shifting. That may in fact be reality for everyone, but will speak for myself here. So, do visit there and thanks for coming here, too. Glad to meet you on the journey...

Friday, September 9, 2016

Please join us on the Island Sept. 10-18

My newest stage text Merde! will be rehearsed and performed in a house on Governor's Island that was curated by Dyfunctional Theatre Collective.

This weekend, Sept. 10-11, will mostly be open rehearsals. On noon at Sept. 11, director Patrice Miller is putting together a ritual of remembrance for the 15th anniversary of 9/11. As the island is off the south of Manhattan, this will be a lovely way to attempt to remember this time outside of the ways we are usually meant to do so. As Patrice said in her invite:

Perhaps you will find yourself in this beautiful city of ours on Sunday, September 11th. And perhaps you, like me, do not feel particularly great on this day in this city. Okay, if you're like me, you hate 9/11 and all of the discourse, flags, and media coverage that fly about. 

This year, I find myself in the midst of a performance workshop on Governor's Island working on a piece that reflects on the intersections of private and personal trauma (Julia Barclay-Morton's latest text, Merde!). I am taking the opportunity to create a ceremony that is inclusive, peace-focused, and creative. Those of us workshopping will be using the ceremony as a little bit of research and development for our piece, specifically looking at the relationships between trauma and ritual. By being with us on Sunday, you are helping us create a piece of performance, as well as helping us redefine what this day can be for New Yorkers. 


As for the play itself, there is a lovely interview about this piece, its evolution and why it's important to me here at: Indie Theater Now.

 Invite below:


Merde! (because is there really anything else to say at this point?)

We’d like to meet you in the house, the one we dream of when half-asleep, where our secrets whisper to us from under the stairs and between the books on the bookshelf, where the Freedom Tower is framed by every window. Sometimes what we see makes us scream, hide, seek. This is and is not an installation performance, this is and is not a piece about what has gone unseen, about what has blown up in front of our eyes, this isn’t about Godot or God but it isn’t not about those things either. It is an experiment in speaking, in invitations, in the performance of public and private truths in a house on an island in a city of dreams.

You are invited to join us for Merde!, my newest stage text directed by Patrice Miller as an experiment in performance on Governor's Island (a short ferry ride from Manhattan or Brooklyn and a world away).

The first weekend is more about process and the second more about performance. On Sept. 11, Patrice will be constructing a ritual of remembrance to lead off our work that day. This work will enter into the performances on Sept. 17 & 18 of this text that I wrote in response to one of the many terrorist attacks earlier this year, which resonated unsettlingly with having been in NYC on 9/11, London on 7/7, and San Francisco during the 1989 earthquake. Merde! is not about seeing ourselves as victims or a catalogue of events, but an attempt to unearth the deeper causes and effects of violence (overt, systemic, symbolic, natural, human-made), and how these public events reverberate with more personal seismic events, generally hidden from view that perhaps need witness in order to heal. 

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Text by Julia Lee Barclay-Morton
Direction by Patrice Miller
Featuring: Tyler 'Tad' D'Agostino, Olivia Baseman, Roy Koshy, Melissa Nelson

Presented as part of the Dysfunctional Collective at House 8B, Nolan Park, Governor's Island

Saturday, September 10th: 12pm-6pm: open rehearsal  

Sunday, September 11th: 
12pm - Sky to Ground: A Ritual of Remembrance and Process 
followed by open rehearsals until 5pm 

Saturday, September 17th: 
2pm: showing 
4pm: showing 

Sunday, September 18th: 
2pm: showing 
4pm: showing


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The performances are FREE but we do have expenses (insurance, transportation, printing costs, etc.), so if you would like to help us defray our costs, please consider a tax deductible contribution, which you can donate securely here:  https://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/fiscal/profile?id=6339
All donors will be thanked in our program and websites, social media platforms and such, and we would be happy to also give a signal boost to any projects of yours as thanks!

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For more Info about Dysfunctional Collective and Directions:
Presented as part of the Dysfunctional Collective by Dysfunctional Theatre Company at House 8B, Nolan Park, Governor's Island.

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I would love to see you there.
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