Category: Uncategorized

Interview with the UK’s Open University on classical studies and theatre

Max Langert

A new published interview with UK’s Open University can be found on their website HERE.

A snippet:

With the Greeks it’s more about stepping into something so old. It’s pre-Christian. For me, that’s a really fascinating space to be in. A lot of Western drama tends to be built around a kind of Christian model. I’m interested in stuff that’s pagan. I’m interested in ritual and ceremony in that sense. But I’m also interested in the fact that a lot of Western drama also comes from places that mimic or echo some of the deep problems in current society. Classical Athens was built on slave labour, right? There were people excluded from seeing the plays, it was for a very specific crowd. I think that all those things are mimicked in US culture. I want to acknowledge that because I think sometimes what happens with ancient Greek plays is that they’re divorced from their contexts. They’re seen as pristine artefacts. They’re not pristine. They’re actually quite dirty. I like the dirtiness of it, and I mean dirty in a socio-political sense. It’s dirty, it’s messy, it’s weird. 

Fugitive Dreams Soars as an Allegorical Road Film – The Hollywood Beat

Max Langert

From the Hollywood Beat:

Fugitive Dreams unfolds like a fever dream along the rails of America—unsettling, poetic, and deeply human. Directed by Jason Neulander and adapted from Caridad Svich’s play, this 2024 release invites viewers into a fragmented journey across a dreamscape America, carried forward by the trembling hope of two lost souls. The film does not follow a traditional plot; instead, it drifts between moments of empathy, despair, and quiet grace, with a non-linear narrative that feels fittingly disorienting.

Read the full review HERE.

Caridad’s brand new Substack: Pocket Theatre

Max Langert

Caridad has a new Substack which you can subscribe to, and the first post, I miss when plays were just plays, can be found HERE.

A snippet:

My concern lies with the needs of the MOMENT overriding the needs of a play and moreover the necessity of what a play can do, in its own humble manner, to achieve the elusive state of wonder that so many ascribe to this form of media. If the play speaks sideways to the NOW, is it suspect? Is it not meeting its moment? or Is it meeting its potential audience in a different way to contemplate human existence?

 

Desdemona’s Child (blood cry) has been acquired for licensing by Theatrical Rights Worldwide (TRW)

Max Langert

You can find the link to the upcoming publication HERE.

PLAY OVERVIEW:

Desdemona’s child comes back to the town in which they were raised, haunted by the ghost of Beautiful D, and with a desire to come to terms with trauma from their past. In this town, trouble rages, as a climate of hate threatens to overtake all. A flood and a whole lotta honest witnessing may start to turn the tide of human darkness. This play is set in modern-day US, freely inspired by and set in the wake of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Find more information about the play on this website HERE.

 

New in Music: “Chavela Vargas” lyrics by Taylor Mac and Caridad Svich, music by Matt Ray featured in Taylor Mac’s Bark of Millions

Kevin Brown

new in music: the song “Chavela Vargas” lyrics by Taylor Mac and Caridad Svich, music by Matt Ray is featured in Taylor Mac’s new four-hour show Bark of Millions, which premieres at the Sydney Opera House on October 20, 2023, and will then be on tour with stops at BAM and more. https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/birthday-festival/bark-millions

Seagull Books features Instructions for Breathing

csvich21

Layout 1By turns astonishing, fierce, and tender, these seven plays by Latina American dramatist Caridad Svich highlight more than two decades of boundary-breaking and genre-defying dramatic work. Populated by characters struggling to survive, these plays are joined by thematic threads of loss, remembrance, resurrection, grave wit and heroic survival.

The centrepiece of this collection, Instructions for Breathing, is a lyrical, dreamlike meditation on responsibility and parenthood that asks an audience not only to suffer the unthinkable loss of a child as Svich’s characters do, but also to laugh at the couple’s flaws and at the hilarity of the suburban life they lead. This commingling of emotion happens in each of these dramatic portraits of homeless castaways (Fugitive Pieces), women in war (Thrush) and sex traffickers (Rift). And Svich’s work is not without a nod to the classical: Wreckage reframes the story of Medea and Steal Back Light from the Virtual depicts a labyrinthine society torn apart by a monstrous beast. In sum, Instructions for Breathing and Other Plays serves as an illuminating introduction to the work of a major playwright and an inspiring example of the breadth of possibilities in North American drama.

ISBN : 9780857421111

[HB] Rs 525 / $25.00/ £16.00

Available at the Seagull Books Store and online in India here and World here.