“. . .Dr. Jenkins, who has taught in Wesleyan’s theater department for 11 years, introduced prison outreach into the curriculum in 2007, bringing students to the York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Niantic, to work with inmates on literary classics. In 2009 and 2010, they began concentrating on ‘Inferno’; this year, because of construction at York, the class took place at the men’s facility in Niantic, the J.B. Gates Correctional Institution. . .
The semester culminated with performances. The Gates inmates presented their work to their peers, and at Wesleyan, the students performed the writings of the inmates for the college community. In the classroom at Sing Sing, the inmates performed for the Wesleyan students, and then the students presented the Gates men’s words, for which they received a standing ovation from the inmates. All of the performances ended with the same line, the last of the poem: ‘E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.’ “And then we emerged to look again at the stars.” [. . .] –Susan Hodara, The New York Times, December 24, 2010
Hell’s Half Acre, Lazarides Gallery London, October 12-17, 2010
“Dante: no other medieval author continues to exert such an extraordinary force on the modern imagination. Those who’ve read his Comedia never recover; those who’ve never read him still feel like they know the Inferno, and because it has become such a cultural norm, they probably do know it. At Cambridge, Prof. Robin Kirkpatrick has been undertaking a massive critical and creative engagement with Dante over the past couple of years in a project entitled Performance, as well as a conference at CRASSH entitled Pain in Performance and ‘Moving Beauty’. This year, on October 30th, Performance 2010 will further explore Dante and other texts in a series of performances, music, dance, art and drawings.” [. . .] —Miglior Acque, October 22, 2010
Contributed by Patrick Molloy
Meghan Healey, “Subterraneo: A Cruel Puppet’s Guide to Underground Living” (2010)
“…The piece is a puppet mash-up of Dante’s Inferno and real-life subway stories gathered by Ms. Healey and a half-dozen student volunteers at Queens College, where she is an assistant professor of costume and scenic design.
Plans call for Homeless Bob to guide the Commutrix — an earnest rider not unlike Ms. Healey — through the subway the way Virgil led Dante through the nine circles of hell, from Limbo to Betrayal. Along the route, they will be serenaded in Spanish by the Undead Mariachi Trio and watch beggars like Legless Joe bewail their afflictions to tug on the heartstrings and purse strings of weary commuters.
Depending on the scenes, to be written by Ms. Healey and several collaborating playwrights, Homeless Bob will be funny, friendly or furious. ‘I think of him as a modern-day New York Virgil, if Virgil was homeless in New York,’ Ms. Healey, 34, said. ‘He’s not as benevolent. He’s angry.'” [. . .] –David Gonzalez, The New York Times, September 17, 2010
Peter Kattenberg’s Progress on the Divine Comedy
Sunday, Sept. 12th, 2010 an exposition of Peter Kattenberg’s work in progress on Dante’s Divina Commedia will open at Arminius, Rotterdam (NL). The guerilla exhibition is part of Festival Witte de With that celebrates the opening of the new Arts Season. Kattenberg’s Dante exposition runs up to Dante’s Day of Death (Sept. 14th) to commemorate the poet and opens during a remonstrant church service to give Dante a new lease on life, both visually and spiritually.
See mores images on YouTube and Vimeo.
Also, at Leiden University Library, there is an exhibition called “Dante, Darling of the People” that opens Sept 14th, 2010.
Herman Melville’s Copy of the Comedy
“. . . Associate professor of English Steven Olsen-Smith is a leader in that scholarly community. He is the primary researcher responsible for tracking the recovery of Melville’s dispersed personal library of around 1,000 books and serves as general editor of Melville’s Marginalia Online, a long-term project devoted to the editing and publication of markings and annotations in the books that survive from Melville’s library.
Olsen-Smith recently borrowed Melville’s copy of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ from collector William Reese as part of the Marginalia project’s pending transition to a new digital format that will display photographic images of marked and annotated books with commentary on their significance to Melville’s writings. The book will be on campus through March 31, and Olsen-Smith’s student interns currently are working to catalog notations and recover erasures. . .
‘Melville marked subject matter dealing with issues of free will and fate, original sin and divine justice, and aspects of subject matter and rhetoric that relate to the book’s epic character,’ Olsen-Smith said. ‘It is clear Melville read and marked the book at different points throughout his life, and the interns are identifying parallels between the marginalia to Dante and subject matter in his writings.'” [. . .] –Erin Ryan, Boise State University Update, March 31, 2010
Contributed by Patrick Molloy
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