2009 – Page 13

Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten, “Popopera” (2009)

September 25, 2009 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“After presenting their highly acclaimed HELL, based on Dante’s Inferno, Emio Greco | PC has completed [purgatorio] POPOPERA which will have its NYC premiere at The Joyce Theater. The company takes its inspiration from Dante’s literary depiction of a geographical place and feeling of transition that provides the opening for inner transformation. Greco and Scholten have said, ‘whereas in HELL we let our dancers wander round the same circles each time, in [purgatorio] POPOPERA they break out of them. The will, the need to live and especially the hope for the future are the essential motives. In [purgatorio] POPOPERA we try to show the audience other images than it expects of those overly familiar themes that cling to the concept of purgatory (catharsis, purification through suffering, …) in order to approach these themes from new angles.’ The company invites audiences to witness the transformation and synergies between dancers’ bodies and the lustrous black electric guitars they carry in this performance that melds dance with rock concert. The piece features original music composed by Bang-on-a-Can founder Michael Gordon, performed live by the dancers and soprano Michaela Riener.” [. . .] —Off Broadway, September 16, 2009

Robert Olen Butler, Hell (2009)

September 7, 2009 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“The fresh hell described by Robert Olen Butler’s new novel is crammed with random celebrities. . . Patrolled by Satan’s minions (among them, two of the Bee Gees) dressed in powder-blue jumpsuits, it’s filled with bookstores that optimistically open with new owners at every sunrise — only to go out of business by the end of each day. If the books they can’t sell in hell are maddeningly uneven, ever bouncing between passable wit and sophomoric giggles. Mr. Butler’s slapdash Hell deserves shelf space there. . .

“Somehow, in the course of Mr. Butler’s fever dream of a plot, Hell also includes Dante’s Beatrice, now a film noir dame contending with Humphrey Bogart, who pines for Lauren Bacall; a chorus of singing cockroaches enamored of the phrase ‘poopy butt’; Michael Jackson, doing a woefully inadequate job of singing Wagner and consigned to ‘Everland, the densely populated molester estate on the edge of the city’; Bobby Fischer, playing chess with a computer from Hadassah; Jerry Seinfeld, whose jokes all bomb; and Celine Dion, who just won’t quit singing that damn ‘Titanic’ song.” [. . .] –Janet Maslin, The New York Times, September 6, 2009

Rene Migliaccio, “Dante’s Inferno” Blackmoon Theatre Company (NYC, 2009)

August 18, 2009 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“In this new adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, Artistic Director Rene Migliaccio creates a multicultural, multidisciplinary and multimedia visual and aural work that positions performers within video projections, redefining traditional theatrical boundaries. Physical Theatre, Music and Poetry in the Italian language create the ritualistic experience of Dante’s journeys through the nine circles of Hell. Canto after canto, Italian performer Alessio Bordoni portrays the character of Dante leading the audience throughout his descent into Hell. The different realms of sin are portrayed through images: moving fragments of collages by critically acclaimed Collage Artist India Evans. Cellist Aminda Asher performs a classical score, a pre-consciousness of Dante’s journey into Hell. In ‘Dante’s Inferno’, the traditional concept of Hell as a place of eternal tortures is re-defined as a condition of spiritual anguish caused by separation from the Sacred.” —Blackmoon Theatre Company

Contributed by Patrick Molloy

Justin Cartwright, “To Heaven by Water” (2009)

August 13, 2009 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“In the two-page prologue to Justin Cartwright’s new novel, To Heaven by Water, two brothers, ‘no longer young,’ are sitting by a campfire in the Kalahari Desert. The elder is smoking dope and reciting Gerard Manley Hopkins’s tongue-twisting, syntax-bending sonnet ‘The Windhover’: ‘I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon. . . .’ (This can’t be very good weed he’s smoking, since he makes it through all 14 lines without losing his way.) In response, the younger ‘feels a rushing, unstoppable love’ for him, which he expresses by mouthing the conclusion of the Divine Comedy: L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle. (Cartwright goes on to translate for us, though such a familiar line needs Englishing far less than Hopkins does.) The scene ends with Cartwright’s own image of the stars, ‘implausibly bright, scattered carelessly like lustrous seed across the southern sky.'” [. . .] –David Gates, The New York Times, August 13, 2009

David Eggers, Zeitoun (2009)

August 13, 2009 By Professor Arielle Saiber

“Imagine Charles Dickens, his sentimentality in check but his journalistic eyes wide open, roaming New Orleans after it was buried by Hurricane Katrina. He would find anger and pathos. A dark fable, perhaps. His villains would be evil and incompetent, even without Heckuva-Job-Brownie. In the end, though, he would not be able to constrain himself; his outrage might overwhelm the tale. . .
But within a week, the sense of menace and edgy despair becomes overwhelming. Now Zeitoun’s days are like a watery version of Dante’s Inferno, with flood and disease and tough moral choices around every bend: rescue or paddle on?” [. . .] —
Timothy Egan, The New York Times, August 13, 2009

Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten, “Popopera” (2009)

Robert Olen Butler, Hell (2009)

Rene Migliaccio, “Dante’s Inferno” Blackmoon Theatre Company (NYC, 2009)

Justin Cartwright, “To Heaven by Water” (2009)

David Eggers, Zeitoun (2009)

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