Archive for the ‘Theater’ Category

Tony Harrison/Fram

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Fram does rise up from the frozen world, uncrushed. The ship, the play, the “craft,” which is both the ship and poet­ry, sails on, for­ward, into the sacred space, where inspi­ra­tion and despair—the song and the scream—can come togeth­er, and embrace.

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Helen Pond and Herbert Senn

Sunday, December 1st, 1996

Boston Ballet’s new Nut­crack­er sets are the work of a design­ing cou­ple, Helen Pond and Her­bert Senn, who live in a Goth­ic house in Yarmouth­port which they have ful­ly restored with Goth­ic carv­ing, paint­ed ceil­ings and “lots and lots of quadrifoils,” says Her­bert. “We designed the house and the Nut­crack­er at the same time. Nut­crack­er is my life.”

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Thursday, September 12th, 1996

Shake­speare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream is about a roy­al wed­ding, lovers lost in an enchant­ed for­est, mag­ic spells, and fairy sprites. But most­ly it is about imag­i­na­tion. In the course of the play, as the char­ac­ters move in and out of the world of dreams, cer­tain words repeat over and over again: Fan­cy. Imag­i­na­tion. Dream. Vision. Trans­port­ed. Trans­fig­ured. Transformed.

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When We Dead Awaken

Thursday, February 21st, 1991

A neon blue riv­er of light cross­es the stage on a diag­o­nal. A black moun­tain looms beyond, pierced by a stark white water­fall. The sculp­tor sits brood­ing on a rocky throne; an egg-shaped stone is pierced with a spear. Two Irenes enter, and lie on the ground, like stones. “You have killed my soul,” they cry. “I am an artist!” cries the sculp­tor. One Irene sits on the rock, like a stat­ue. “I was a human being too.”

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The Sound Artist: Hans Peter Kuhn

Monday, February 18th, 1991

“Sound art is more open and much clos­er to life than music. Music is a fil­tered expe­ri­ence. I’m not a com­pos­er. I don’t want the emo­tion­al view bound or direct­ed in any one direc­tion. I want to keep it open. I’m always try­ing things out. I hear some­thing and I can pick it up and react in min­utes. I’m inter­est­ed in every­thing that makes a noise.”

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Robert Wilson’s Vision

Thursday, January 17th, 1991

ROBERT WILSON’S VISION is struc­tured like a jour­ney — a jour­ney that moves from morn­ing to night — from white to black — from the past to the future — from birth to death. A jour­ney that has no begin­ning and no end, but all takes place in a time­less, end­less present.

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Madame de Pompadour

Friday, June 1st, 1990

Madame de Pom­padour always man­aged to look grace­ful, even in the most con­strict­ing clothes — corsets, bus­tles, and stays. Like Madon­na, she cre­at­ed a Look that was supreme­ly arti­fi­cial — the pow­dered hair, the heav­i­ly applied make-up, the elab­o­rate gowns. Like Madon­na in her John-Paul Gaulti­er bustiers, La Pom­padour in her negligée proud­ly dis­played her sex­u­al­i­ty as the source of her power. 

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Robert Whitman

Sunday, January 14th, 1990

The can­vas curled back like a white wave. The light turned red. Sil­hou­ettes of dancers moved through the white space like brush­strokes mov­ing across a pic­ture plane. The light turned white. The ceil­ing rip­pled and bil­lowed. Silence. White light. I was tak­ing notes, and the only sound I could hear was the sound of my own writ­ing. It was over.

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