Endicott Redux

Maison Foo

Our "Monday Video" this week comes from the Maison Foo Theatre Company, presenting highlights from their dramatic adaptation of Carol Ann Duffy's mythic poetry collection The World's Wife.

Maison Foo is a theatre collective based in Derbyshire, England. Their name, they say comes from "Maison (house, home, dwelling, abode, address, residence, quarters, place, igloo) and Foo (an indescribable word given to indefinable things; happiness; influenced by the Yiddish word 'feh' and the English word 'Fool'; a rare species of dog; cult word in early Surrealist comic strips; rooted in the French word 'Fou,' meaning to be mad)." To learn more about the company, and their production of The World's Wife, visit their website.

The Ash Girl

From February 28 to March 8 the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center will show The Ash Girl, written by Timberlake Wertenbaker and directed by Leslie Felbain. Says the notice: "Celebrated playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker spins the Cinderella fairy tale back to its Central European roots as she conveys the Ash Girl's tumultuous journey toward self-discovery with poetic language and compelling metaphors."

Timberlake Wertenbaker has written a host of plays, some of which are collected in Timberlake Wertenbaker: Plays One and Timberlake Wertenbaker: Plays Two. Go here to read more about her.

You can also learn more about the story of the Ash Girl in Terri Windling's article, "Ashes, Blood, and the Slipper of Glass," or in Helen Pilinovsky's article, "Donkeyskin, Deerskin, Allerleirauh: The Reality of the Fairy Tale." The image above is by Adrienne Ségur.

The Return of The Rusalka Cycle: Kitka

Kitka, an all-women's ensemble specializing in Balkan music, collaborated a while back with Ukrainian-born singer and composer Mariana Sadovska to create the "The Rusalka Cycle," a choral performance of the laments of the Rusalka, the haunted spirits of drowned women. Due to the success of the show, Kitka has prepared an encore performance for January 4, 5, and 6th at Kanbar Hall in San Francisco. (Go here for times, directions, and ticket ordering.) Here's a brief description of the show from Kitka's website:

"In Slavic Folklore, Rusalki are the restless spirits of women who have died unjust, untimely, or unnatural deaths. They inhabit the waters, forests, and fields, luring people to them with their mesmerizing songs and wild laughter. Performed by the nine powerful female vocalists of Kitka, together with percussionist Loren Mach and cellists Jessica Ivry and Myra Chaney, The Rusalka Cycle is a riveting, dream-like journey that weaves traditional Eastern European folk song and ritual together with original music by Mariana Sadovska in a haunting and evocative contemporary theater production directed by Ellen Sebastian Chang.

"Our re-imagined 2008 production features new costumes by Valera Coble, lighting design by Jack Carpenter, sound design by Cuco Daglio, beguiling new characters, and many dramatic moments previously unseen."

It's also worth noting that even if you can't see the show, the CD is available from the website. And do, do, do stop by their MySpace page to hear some of their gorgeous singing.

Music, masks, and more...

The video above captures several members of Daughters of Elvin in performance at the Oxford Folk Festival. (Daughters is a medieval music and dance troupe based here in Devon, directed by my good friend Katy Marchant -- playing pipe and tabor in this video.) The masked figure who emerges halfway through the song (based on medieval Woodwose legends) is just one of the many mythical creatures who turn the Daughters' sublime music into spells of incantation. The Woodwose mask was made by Katy, but the group also use masks and costumes designed by Alan Lee and Wendy Froud.

You can read more about the group here (in an article from JoMA's archives), or visit the Daughters of Elvin MySpace page to hear more of their glorious music. And I hope you didn't miss Chanda Cerchione-Peltier's in-depth article on Katy and the Daughters in the Summer 2007 issue of Faerie Magazine.

Speaking of Faerie Magazine, Chandra has asked us to mention the current Fall issue, which does indeed sound promising. "In the new issue," she says, "I interview [film puppeteer] William Todd-Jones, Ari Berk writes about Beowulf's Grendel, SurlaLune's Heidi Ann Heiner offers a history of Rapunzel, and there is a wonderful spread about Brian Froud's new book, World of Faerie. The magazine is available in the US through booksellers such as Barnes & Nobles and Borders; for readers in the UK, issues can be purchased through I Do Believe."

Desert Diwali

 

The photograph above, "Desert Diwali" by Stu Jenks, comes from a flamboyant (if somewhat untraditional) celebration of the Hindu Festival of Light hosted by the pyrotechnic group Flam Chen in Tucson, Arizona. See Stu's blog for his description of the event.

Ashes, Ashes

Ashes, Ashes, a new fairy tale play by Eve Tulbert, directed by Dustin Wills, is currently in production at the University of Texas at Austin, with performances running until November 18th. Tulbert notes that the play grew out of her interest in mythology and her encounters with young people living with industrial pollution. Here's a description of the piece:

"A giant power plant has taken over a mythical town. Dark clouds of ashes obscure the sky, and no one has seen sunlight in generations. People in the town are beginning to 'disintegrate' from a mysterious illness. When Nini, a young girl, loses her mother to the illness, she goes on a journey into a mysterious underworld of coal mining shafts and caves where the walls are alive. Through a series of challenges and encounters with interesting new characters, Nini searches for a secret that could possibly save the world above....Ashes, Ashes is a show for family audiences, though the themes are complex and the language poetic."

Coinciding with the production, fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes gave a talk last week titled "And Nobody Lived Happily Ever After: The Feminist Fairy Tale and Its Consequences" -- oh how I wish I could have been there! I apologize to our Texas readers for not informing you in time, as we only just learned of the event. (The talk was covered by The Daily Texan, here.) For more on Ashes, Ashes, go to the university's Department of Theatre and Dance website.

Shadows of the past....

Douglas Gresham has published a moving tribute to his stepfather, C.S. Lewis, in a recent edition of The Guardian -- timed to co-incide with a new London staging of William Nicholson's Shadowlands, the moving play about C.S. Lewis (known to his stepson as "Jack") and Gresham's mother, Joy Davidman.

"I think that in today's sad and dark world many people will have difficulty in believing in the real Jack," writes Gresham. "He was a man who had grown up with the thinking of the 19th century. He believed in honesty, personal responsibility, commitment, duty, courtesy, courage, chivalry and all those great qualities that society in its wisdom dispensed with in the 20th century on the grounds that they were somehow outdated, and now needs so desperately to recall and recover." (Read the full article here.)

For more information on Shadowlands, visit the Wyndhams Theatre website. 

Wolves in New York

Last autumn, we recommended the Improbable Theatre Company's show The Wolves in the Walls, a "musical pandemonium" based on a fabulous children's book by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean. This autumn, we're pleased to report, the show will be traveling from the UK to New York's New Victory Theater.

I expect tickets are going to go fast, so even though it's not until October (October 5 - 21, to be precise), it's probably best to reserve tickets soon. Click here for more information, and here for a nifty little Wolves in the Walls animation.

“Our best work comes from mistakes and accidents; theatre is too important to take too seriously.”  -- The Improbable Theatre Company.

The Need for Wonder

In this video from the Human Forum Conference in Puerto Rico, Endicott contributor Ari Berk discusses the need for wonder in children's lives. He's introduced (in song!) by Fred Johnson. Part II of Ari's talk is here.

The next generation of magic...

Continuing our year-long celebration of the Endicott Studio's 20th Anniversary, we're continuing to add new pictures to our 20 Years of Mythic Arts page -- such as the photograph of Lillian Todd-Jones above, added just this morning.

Lillian, who recently turned 18, wasn't yet born when the Endicott Studio began. In this magical picture she's getting ready to perform as a dancer (on stilts!), poi twirler and fire-juggler extraordinaire at a very groovy summer festival here in England. She's playing the role of Kineree, a legendary Bird Goddess of Thailand, in a costume designed by her father, the film and stage puppeteer William "Todd" Todd-Jones.  (The costume was fabricated by Gabrielle Peckham, and the stilts were built by Dean Gardiner.) Lillian has performed onstage with the Scissor Sisters at the BAFTAs, in The Rhino Drum Show, and at the Faerieworlds Festival in the United States. She has also had small parts in films and on television, and can be fleetingly glimpsed in the latest Harry Potter movie. She's currently a student, pursuing studies in animal conservation and art.

Below, the Satyr on the left is Lillian's dad and the Satyr on the right is her good friend Toby Froud -- who is also a stilt-walker and fire-juggler (as well as a very fine sculptor and filmmaker). The costumes were designed in collaboration between Toby's mother, Wendy Froud, and Todd. The Satyrs have appeared at such places as Mythic Journeys and the Faerieworlds Festival...and have the habit of turning up when you least expect them...

 

Metamorphosis #7: Carolyn Ryder Cooley

Performance and installation artist Carolyn Ryder Cooley creates "emotionally driven narrative spaces" and modern mythic stories in three-dimensional form for viewers to enter into, experience, and explore. Her work is informed by fantasy and folklore, nature, history, politics, the mystery of abandoned places and found objects, and the secret lives of insects, birds, and animals (especially deer). She is an interstitial artist who weaves visual art, performance art and music together as she endeavors "to engage viewers on multi-sensory levels that alter their experience of time and place."

Her intent, she says, is to "invent haunted dream worlds that echo political and cultural phenomena of past and present. Video, sound and site-specific lighting create an atmosphere of dis-reality. Rescued materials are transformed into props and garments which reveal incomplete evidence of pasts. Emerging from post-industrial waste, pollution and decay, these installation places give refuge to new habitations of marginal hybrid species. Mythical androgen creatures stem from cracks and crevices as drawings and performance characters. Their bodies are often scarred, bandaged and modified through plastic surgeries and transfigurations that abandon notions of gender and identity. By performing improvisationally and collaboratively within these installations, I myself become a Utopian gutter creature."

The photograph at the top of this page is from Ryder Cooley's "Serenades for a Dead Deer," performed in Troy, New York in 2006. The next image is "Serenade for Factory Factories and Mills," North Adams, Massachusetts, 2006. To the right is "Apparitions, Serenade for Tabor," in which a mysterious veiled figure in a feathered gown performs at various sites in the town of Tabor, Czech Republic, 2004. Just below is "The Riverbird Serenade" (North Adams, Massachusetts, 2005), which the artist describes as follows:

"A chair is suspended from a bridge. Musical serenades are performed in the chair 10 ft. above a river with cars driving overhead and birds flying around. Performance and chair are viewed through the gallery windows. Concurrently, an indoor installation consists of four chairs suspended in individual window wells. One empty window invites a view of the chair outside. Beneath each chair is a nest of rocks collected from the river. During non-performance hours, serenades can be watched on video and the performance gown hangs alongside the video monitor."

The last two images come from Ryder Cooley's performance piece "To End All War," created in 2005 to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The artist explains:

"The central character, Vigil Deer, is an antlered doe. She is clothed in red, the color of martyrdom and blood as a reminder of the suffering caused by war. The iconography of this project stemmed from a series of deer encounters during the rutting and hunting season, and the subsequent discovery of a hermaphroditic deer species, known as the Velvet Horns, who live peacefully in alternative communities."

Ryder Cooley received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in sculpture in 1993, spent several years as an active member of the San Francisco arts community, and then earned an MA in Combined Media at SUNY, Albany. Her work (which also includes drawings, paintings, and murals) has been exhibited widely, from California and New York to the Czech Republic, Morocco, and Indonesia. She has participated in community arts workshops in El Salvador, is a recipient of a Belle Foundation Grant, and her work was included in the 2006 Hot and Cold catalogue acquisition at MOMA in New York. To learn more about Ryder Cooley's multi-faceted art, please visit her website, which is fascinating, inspiring, and magical. (With thanks to Ulla and Midori for the link.)

Masked madness from Ophaboom...

Ophaboom, the Commedia dell'Arte theatre company co-founded by Geoff Beale and Howard Gayton, is touring a hilarious (and sharply political) Commedia version of the "Robin Hood" legend through the Welsh countryside over the next couple of weeks. There are are also two "Casanova" performances scheduled in Hereford and Romsey at the end of the month. These may be the only times you'll be able to see Ophaboom in the U.K. this year, so catch them while you can. Visit their MySpace page for information on the shows, and on this fabulous company.   

 

Cinderella in Oxfordshire

Last September, we ran a review of a production of The Lion King by Sticks Theatre -- an incredible company in Oxfordshire, England, run entirely by teen actors, directors, designers, costumers, and producers. This weekend, they are offering a sassy take on the Cinderella fairy tale. If you're anywhere near Oxford, this is not to be missed. The peformances are on Saturday, July 7, at 2:00 pm and 6:30 pm, at St. Mary's Lodge, Challow Road in Wantage, Oxfordshire.

Cinderella is one of most popular tales in the fairy tale canon -- indeed, there are few people in Western culture (as well as in many Eastern cultures) who do not know her story. We've all grown up with the wicked step–mother, the pumpkin coach, and the slipper of glass; these images have become an indelible part of childhood. Yet the Cinderella we know today has been altered from the Ash Girl folk tales handed down for at least a thousand years. Our modern Cinderella is a simple (and simple–minded) rags–to–riches story: the tale of a timid, passive girl whose lovely face wins her the "happy ending" of a wealthy marriage. How did the feisty Ash Girl of the past turn into the feckless creature of the Disney film and countless modern picture books?

To examine this, we must go back to the oldest written versions of the story, beginning with a Chinese Cinderella tale recorded back in the 9th century (although the scribe, Tuan Ch'eng Shih, implies that the story was old even at that time). To learn more about Cinderella's history, follow this link to an article on the subject in the current issue of the Journal of Mythic Arts. 

The art above is by Edmund Dulac; Val Cameron Prinsep; and an unattributed painting from Caesar Alcocar's page on Yeh-Hsian, the Chinese Cinderella. The little drawing below is by Jennie Harbour. And here's a poignant poem by Emma Bull, from the point of view of one of Cinderella's step-sisters.

Speaking of fairy tales: the queen of fairy tales on the web, Heidi Anne Heiner, editor of Surlalune Fairy Tales, has recently redesigned her whole website...so stop in and take a look if you haven't been there for awhile. It is truly a treasure. Heidi has also got a MySpace page now, still minimal but likely to evolve. Endicott has got a MySpace page now too, which is also in the process of growing and changing -- and we've just put up a new MySpace page for Ophaboom, the Commedia dell'Arte theatre company run by my partner Howard Gayton. If you're MySpace users, come "friend" us!

                        

Mythic Music: Kan'Nal and Lunar Fire

There are an increasing number of performance troupes these days who combine music, dance, theater, acrobatics, pyrotechnics, and elements of shamanic ritual to create unique performances that bring mythic archetypes to life. We featured once such group in a previous post, Flam Chen of Tucson, Arizona. Endicott reader Barbara Brugger has recommended another: Kan'Nal, who describe their sound as "tribal psychedelic rock," along with their "alter-ego" group Lunar Fire, featuring "improvised music drawn from many sources, including hip-hop, punk, dub and psychedelic art rock."

Writing about Kan'Nal's music in The Washington Post, Michael Deed says: "It's a rare CD that makes you want to rub sticks together in your back yard, yank off your clothing and howl at the moon while cavorting around a crackling bonfire. Kan'Nal's Dreamwalker has that effect...Tribal-rock blasts such as 'Gypsy' and 'Iris' plunge a hand into your chest and grab onto the part of your being that swung from trees a few million years ago. Find another band that does that." (Read the full review here.)

Check out the Kan'Nal website, particularly the video section, for a taste of modern tribal magic.

 

Dartmoor magic...

We've written about Daughters of Elvin at Endicott before (there was an article on them in the Journal of Mythic Arts in 2002, and some of their masks were featured in our Mask Art exhibition, 2004). But our newer readers may not yet know about this wonderful troupe specializing in medieval music and dance, directed by my good friend Katy Marchant, who perform in old churches, castles, concert halls, and festivals all across the British Isles. Visit the Daughter's MySpace page, where you can hear some of their music and order their CD Garden of Earthly Delights (with cover art designed by Brian Froud).They're putting the final touches on a new CD now -- and keep an eye on Faerie Magazine, where they'll soon be profiled in an article by Chandra Cerchione-Peltier.

   

Pyrotechnics in a good cause...

For readers in southern Arizona: Flam Chen -- Tucson's magical, mythical, pyrotechnical theatre troupe -- will be performing at the Nimbus Brewery today, along with a stellar roster of musicians, from 2:00 pm until midnight. If you missed the Tucson Folk Festival last week, here's a chance to see some of the best performers from it -- and all in aid of a good cause too. This is a benefit event to raise money and awareness about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. The $8.00 door donation goes entirely to the Save Darfur Coalition. Check the Events section of the Nimbus website for more info.

Perhaps I'll see some of you there?

Sleeping Beauty Wakes

Sleeping Beauty Wakes, a critically-acclaimed new fairy tale musical performed by the Center Theatre Group of Los Angeles, has been extended until May 20th -- so there's still a little time to catch the show if you act quickly. Here's the company's description of it:

"After her centuries long snooze, Beauty wakes to find herself far from her fairy tale kingdom in a contemporary sleep-disorder center, where all the princes seem to have disappeared! A delightful twist on Grimms’ classic fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty Wakes takes us on a wild theatrical journey entwined in these two parallel worlds, as Beauty discovers the real costs of flirting with danger, the joy of living and the meaning of true love....Director Jeff Calhoun and Deaf West Theatre craft a unique musical featuring both deaf and hearing actors along with the indie pop/rock sensation GrooveLily to create a distinctively theatrical musical event."

More information can be found on the Center Theatre Group's website.

The art above is by Edward Frederick Brewtnall.

Where Elephants Weep

For those of you in New England, please go to Lowell, Massachusetts this week, if you possibly can, to see the World Premier of Amrita's new Cambodian opera, Where Elephants Weep. (I apologize for this last-minute notice; I only just found out about the performance.)

As Charles McDermid describes Where Elephants Weep in Cambodia's Phnom Penh Press, this "first-of-its-kind opera attempts to fuse traditional Cambodian music with Western structures in a songwriting salmagundi that includes rock, rap, ancient Khmer lullabies and even cellphone rings. In the span of one production, synthesizers, electric guitars and 12th Century Cambodian instruments will be used to perform old Khmer Rouge songs, American hip-hop and classical operatic love songs."

And here's Amrita's description of this very interstitial-sounding peformance: "East Meets West in a New Contemporary Cambodian Opera, fusing traditional Cambodian music with rock and rap, sung in English and Khmer, with surtitles in both languages. First preview performances in Lowell on April 27, 28 & 29, 2007. Sam, a refugee from the Khmer Rouge genocide, leaves America and returns to his homeland, Cambodia. Committed to finding his roots in his native culture, he unexpectedly falls in love with Bopha, a pop-star. The struggle between the traditional and modernity, East and West, is played out through a musical score drawing on classical western, ancient Cambodian, and popular American music traditions – against the backdrop of a beautiful land torn by war and terror."

For more information about how the opera was created, and to view a short video, visit the Where Elephants Weep website. And visit the Cambodian Living Arts website to learn more about the ongoing work of reviving Cambodian traditional arts after the ravages of war.

Geoff Ryman, Howard Gayton, Geoff Beale and I saw members of the Amrita company perform in London last month in a Cambodian dance drama, Weyreap's Battle, which was absolutely dazzling. Keep an eye on the Amrita website for other productions in Cambodia and around the world.

I highly recommended Geoff Ryman's gorgeous (and deeply mythic) new novel The King's Last Song, set in both modern and ancient Cambodia. Strangely, the book hasn't yet found an American publisher -- despite all the awards Geoff's fiction has been winning these days -- but you can order the English edition here. I also recommend Geoff's story "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter," which was published in F&SF and is up for this year's Hugo Award. You can read it on-line here. 

Nightmares and Pillow Tales

The Studio Theatre 2nd Stage in Washington D.C. is currrently presenting The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh, a dark and powerful play in which a writer of fairy tales is interrogated about the gruesome murder of three children. "What The Pillowman is about," wrote Ben Brantley in The New York Times, "is storytelling and the thrilling narrative potential of theater itself. Let's make one thing clear: Mr. McDonagh is not preaching the power of stories to redeem or cleanse or to find a core of solid truth hidden among life's illusions. And he is certainly not exalting the teller of stories as a morally superior being....For what The Pillowman is celebrating is the raw, vital human instinct to invent fantasies, to lie for the sport of it, to bait with red herrings, to play Scheherazade to an audience real or imagined. For Mr. McDonagh, that instinct is as primal and energizing as the appetites for sex and food. Life is short and brutal, but stories are fun. Plus, they have the chance of living forever."

You can read Brantley's full article here. Another thoughtful review of the play can be found on The Mumpsimus blog. More information on McDonagh can be found on the Irish Writers Online website, and the text of The Pillowman is available in a paperback edition from Faber & Faber.

 

Nightmares and Pillow Tales: In conjunction with their production of The Pillowman, the company will host an evening of dark fairy tales and ghastly childhood stories. The staged readings will feature stories from The Pillowman, the grisly poetry that inspired Shockheaded Peter, Edward Gorey’s modern classic The Gashlycrumb Tinies, unsanitized early versions of classic tales like Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty, and contemporary fairy tale writings by Angela Carter, me, and others. 

Directed by 2ndstage Artistic Director Keith Alan Baker, the stories will be read by Founding Artistic Director Joy Zinoman and faculty from the Studio Theatre Acting Conservatory. The readings will be held this weekend, March 24 and 25, and next weekend, March 31 and April 1, at 5pm. More information can be found here.

    

The art above is by Paula Rego (from her Pillowman Triptych), Jennie Harbour (from her Snow Drop illustrations, 1921) and Edward Gory (from The Gashlycrumb Tinies).

The Monkey King in London

Weyreap's Battle is a traditional dance-drama from Cambodia, retelling an episode from the Reamker, the Cambodian version of the Indian Ramayana epic. Using elaborate costume, painted masks, and dance movements that date back at least to the 10th century, the drama depicts the mythic battle between Hanuman, the noble Monkey King, and Ravana, a wicked tyrant.

Robert Turnbull  put the performance in historical perspective in an article for The Independent, noting that a full 80 percent of Cambodia's performing artists perished under the Khmer Rouge in the years between 1975 and 1979. He writes: "From 1980, war-weary dancers, musicians, and shadow puppeteers returned to Phnom Penh to begin the painstaking process of documenting centuries-old techniques preserved only in fragile memories. There was no money -- artists were paid with petrol and rice -- but within only a few years, complex dance-dramas made up of thousands of gestures had been rescued from oblivion. Tradition had proved its ability to resist the worst of mankind's brutality." I recommend reading Turnbull's full article, which is moving and inspiring.

Weyreap's Battle will be performed at London's Barbican Theatre (March 30 -- April 1) by an amalgam of artists from Phnom Penh's Royal University of Fine Arts, Cambodia's National Theatre, and Amrita Performing Arts. The production is the first full-length dance drama of its type to have emerged from Cambodia in half a century. We're not permitted to reproduce the Barbican's gorgeous production photographs here (we have only the small Amrita photos of the Monkey King above and the Monkey Army below), so go over to the Barbican Theatre website and take a look. You'll also find a short video there.

I'm planning to go to see Weyreap's Battle myself, and am glad to have the privilege of doing so considering the work, skill, and bravery it has taken to keep this mythic tradition alive.

 

The Magical Ballets of Matthew Bourne

The March 12th issue of The New Yorker magazine has a good article by Joan Acocella on the British choreographer Matthew Bourne, creator of the famous "all-male swans" version of Swan Lake, a ballet version of Edward Scissorhands, and other extraordinarily magical dance productions. "In the traditional Swan Lake," writes Acocella, "the Prince falls in love with a female swan. In Bourne's version, the beloved is a male swan. This was a big sensation, and it supplied every journalist covering the show with a ready-made lead. But what was important about the gender switch was that it made the old love story romantic again, by making it seem dangerous.

"To many people, of course, homosexuality is no longer a social danger, but Bourne restored it to that status. In the canonic Swan Lake, the lead Swan and her cohort are turned into swans by an evil sorcerer. In Bourne's ballet, the swans are swans -- they haven't changed into anything -- and, like real swans, they are ferocious. They swoop, they dive; the lead Swan fixes the Prince with a cold, glassy stare. In other words, this is romance not just between a male and a male, but between a human being and an animal -- a situation that, needless to say, would have no place in the modern, normalizing homophile plot....Fundamentally, Swan Lake is sincere, in the 19th-century sense, and about a 19th century subject: the idea that we all have souls that are bigger than the world, and that romantic passion reveals this to us, fatally. The love that kills still exists, and it still kills."  (Read the full article, in pdf format, here.)

For more information on Matthew Bourne, visit his website -- which contains a gallery of photographs from Swan Lake, Edward Scissorhands, Cinderella, The Nutcracker, and other productions. Swan Lake can be seen at the Lyric Theatre in Brisbane, Australia, after which it moves on to Melbourne. Edward Scissorhands can be seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music until the end of March, after which it moves on to Toronto. The full schedule for both shows is on Bourne's website. You can also see Bourne's Swan Lake on video.

Ghost Theater: Mary Rose

Peter Pan was not the only play J.M. Barrie wrote about characters who disappear into mysterious Neverlands where time stands still and they do not age, unlike the families they've left behind. Barrie's adult play Mary Rose is currently being staged at the Vineyard Theatre in New York (until March 25th). Writing about the production in The New Yorker magazine, theater critic John Lahr asks:

"Can we agree that we're all haunted? The ghost world is part of our world. We carry within us the good and the bad, the spoken and the unspoken imperatives of our missing loved ones. As children, we are dreamed up by our parents; as adults, when our parents die we dream them up in turn. Conversations rarely stop at the grave. So, when we encounter ghosts onstage, they both terrify and compel us; within their trapped energy is an echo of our own unresolved losses. Ghosts must be banished, in order to get rid of their aggression toward the living and our aggression toward them for having left us. In the theatre, ghosts are traditionally agents either of tragic provocation (the ghost of Hamlet's father) or of comic persecution (Elvira in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit); in Tina Landau's clever and stimulating revival of J. M. Barrie's 1920 play Mary Rose (at the Vineyard), however, the ghost turns out to be a catalyst for autobiographical repair."  (Read the full article here.)

For more on J.M. Barrie, read my article on Barrie in the Endicott archives, Anthony Lane's article on Barrie in The New Yorker archives, and visit the informative J.M. Barrie website.

Kabara Sol

The fabulous Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble of Los Angeles has opened a new play, Kabara Sol, that runs from January 18th to February 20th. Ziggurat Theatre has a history of remarkable performances culled from international myths, dance, and mask theatre. You can read an article on the ensemble here, and an interview with Ziggurat's multi-talented director and playwright Stephen Legawiec on the Endicott website.

And here is a description of the new play:

"Set in the seedy underworld of a fantastical Oriental port in the 30’s, KABARA SOL is the hallucinatory weaving of three lives: an opium kingpin, a drug-addled chanteuse, and the deformed amnesiac with powerful attachments to both. KABARA SOL is a spellbinding fable of murder and redemption and uses masks and ritualized dance to create a spiritual theatrical event that serves as an exorcism of evil.

"KABARA SOL features Ziggurat veteran Dana Wieluns in an acting tour de force as she performs the roles of the larger-than-life male drug lord, the voluptuous torch singer and the mysterious crippled girl without a past."

Rapunzel in London

Kneehigh Theatre, a 25-year-old company from Cornwall dedicated to created "challenging, accessible, and anarchic theatre" for children and their families, is performing a new fairy tale play, Rapunzel, at the Battersea Arts Centre in London.

As Paul Taylor explained in an article in yesterday's issue of The Independent, "Rapunzel represents a departure for the company in two respects. It is the first time that Emma Rice has directed a pre-existing script -- the wonderfully involving, witty and emotionally potent version here is by Annie Siddons who has been inspired, in turn, by Italo Calvino's variants on the narrative. And it is the first time that she has directed a show aimed at children. In practice, though, these new considerations don't make much difference. Like those names 'embedded in seaside rock,' the Kneehigh signature runs indelibly through this exhilarating piece. A childlike enthusiasm for story-telling combined with a inspired knack of finding a fresh angle on mythic profundities is the hallmark of a company that has often developed material derived from folk tale." 

Taylor notes that the play re-works the themes of Rapunzel in clever ways. "Siddons's version remains strongly faithful to the central notion of a young girl who, once she hits puberty, is trapped in a tower by the jealous, stiflingly protective love of a bad-mother-figure. Here, the turreted imprisonment of Rapunzel (the enchantingly mettlesome Edith Tankus) is represented by having her balanced on a high swing and, by a neat piece of visual paradox involving a system of pulleys, when visitors climb up her rope of hair, this is betokened by the descent of the swing to their level. The heir to a dukedom (Pieter Lawman) who falls in love and tries to rescue her is true to the original, blinded for his pains. But in Siddons's account, Rapunzel is no longer an essentially passive sufferer. She embarks on a dangerous mission to find her lover and ends up disguised as a man." (Read the full text of Taylor's article here.)

The play runs through January 15. More information is available on the Battersea Arts Centre website.

The Power of Compassion

Monks from the Gelupka (Yellow Hat) order of Tibetan Buddhism are currently touring Britain presenting "The Power of Compassion," a deeply mythic performance piece containing music, chanting, masked dancers, and sacred rituals invoking a retinue of deities. On Wednesday, The Independent newspaper ran an excellent article on the monks and their performance by poet and journalist Tim Cumming. In the 90 minute peformance, writes Cumming, "they fill the air with the chanting of Buddhist texts, the recitation of mantras, the ringing of bells and symbols, the blowing of horns and the beating of drums. There are dances -- the four lords of death appear, preceded by a 'cutting,' in which the monks imagine themselves cutting off parts of their own bodies to offer to the deities."

Cumming quotes one of the senior monks, Kelkshang Rinpoche, who explains: "What we do on stage is very similar to what we do at the monastery...The instruments we use go back to the Bon shamanistic tradition" -- a tradition that is more than 16,000 years old. By turning these rituals into performance, the monks seek to spread a better understanding of their culture to audiences around the world, and to keep these traditions from disappearing as they live in exile from their homeland. Currently the monks live and work in the Tashi Lhunpo monastery in India. More information about Gelupka Buddhism can be found on the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery UK Trust website, which will also post future tour dates as they become available. In the mean time, a CD of the performance, The Power of Compassion, can be purchased here.   

Festival of Animated Objects

The city of Calgary in Canada has become a hotbed of innovative puppetry, with a strong underground of cutting edge puppeteers and performance troupes. The Calgary Animated Objects Society is a non-profit organization founded in 2003 to develop and promote the arts of puppetry, mask, and animated objects. Their major project is the annual International Festival of Animated Objects. This year's event is coming up soon, January 19-28th, so make your plans now if you'd like to attend.

The IFAO is a ten day celebration of all things mask and puppet-like, featuring "local, national, and international artists working in the broader realm of animated objects." For more information, visit the IFAO's website.

Mixing it up in Lancashire...

Here's one to mark on your calendar for this week if you're anywhere near Lancashire, UK: INtheMIX is "a place to meet up-and-coming artists, performers, puppeteers, and new visual theatre companies at a congenial and lively cabaret-style event." These salon/cabaret events are hosted twice a year by the Horse and Bamboo theatre company in Waterfoot, Lancashire. The INtheMIX evening for this autumn is scheduled for Thursday, October 26th. Click here for more information on it, and here for a calendar of other Horse and Bamboo events, shows, and workshops.

Yes, more masks....

In a follow-up to Midori's post yesterday (and our Oct. 5th post on mask theater companies), we'd like to direct you to a few good sites where you'll find pictures and information on mythological and ritual masks used by indigenous peoples around the world. 

The Art of the African Masks contains "Faces of Spirits" and other masks in the collection of the Bayly Art Museum in Virginia. "The African masks that hang on walls of Western art museums, detached from their full-body costumes, were originally part of whole performance ensembles, consisting of elaborately costumed dancers, vibrant music, and highly stylized dances. These complex ceremonial events expressed important social, religious, and moral values for the whole community."