Nick Boersen

100 years ago Mata Hari faced the firing squad as a convicted Dutch spy. It was at this moment that the legend of Mata Hari, the seductive spy, was born. Newly-discovered documents cast doubt on her guilt and reveal startling truths about her life. Mata Hari was a self-made woman whose boldness and sexuality threatened the male establishment. Most of what we've known about her until now has largely been myth. Mata Hari's challenges as an abused wife, single mother and a creative independent woman are familiar to women around the world. At the turn of the century, her struggles to attain sexual freedom, artistic expression, and liberation from the constraints of conventional society are the same ones women face today. She graced the cover of Vogue, performed all over Europe and left a coterie of smitten admirers in her wake.

Stefan Themerson plays himself in the role of a poet who accuses political and religious leaders of stealing the tools of his trade. His goal is to expose the demagogues as thieves. A researcher launches an investigation and discovers that the poet is unwilling to take back hidden contaminated tools. He (the poet) has devised a method to reveal the reality behind the poem. He wants to strip the words of their associations, sever their ties to the past, scrub them clean of their dictionary definitions. He calls his method Semantic Poetry.