Synopses & Reviews
Pataphysics, as invented by Alfred Jarry, is the science of imaginary solutions. Had Jarry been a Dante buff, he might have invented the screwy, hilarious, quirky characters that
La Divina Caricatura strings together. Written by Lee Breuer, this trilogy of plays, adapted from his previous short stories, introduces us to: Rose the Dog (who thinks she is a woman); John, the junkie filmmaker (who is Rose the Dogs lover); Ponzi Porco, PhD (a pig in love with the
New York Times); and the Warrior Ant (who, to impress his father, Trotsky the Termite, declares perpetual revolution of the bugs of the fifth world and vanquishes the Liberal Establishment on the White House lawn). Each of these souls is on his or her own pilgrimage and, without a Virgil or Beatrice to guide them, often guide each otheronly to get turned completely around.
La Divina Caricatura is a darkly comedic look at the Dante we never knew, but had a hunch was there.
Praise for the original short stories
A comic spectacle. . . . An acid-trip collage of philosophy, mythology, corny jokes, and lyric poetry.”New York Times
Synopsis
Published earlier as fiction,
La Divina Caricatura is a trilogy of plays:
The Shaggy Dog Animation,
Ecco Porco and
The Warrior Ant. They are three servings of pataphysical Dante. Here in our Inferno, our Purgatoria, our Paradisio, souls are cartoons and they are represented in the halfway house of Purgatorio as that cubic cartoon known as a puppet, puppets that are halfway houses between the flesh and the pixel.
Alfred Jarry, who invented pataphysics and reinvented black humor, had been a Dante buff; he might also have invented the characters that string Lee Breuers plays together: Rose the Dog, who thinks she is a woman; her lover John, the Junkie filmmaker; Ponzi Porco PhD, the pig in love with the New York Times; and the Warrior Ant, who, to impress his father, Trotsky the Termite, declares perpetual revolution of the bugs of the fifth world and vanquishes the Liberal Establishment on the White House lawn. They are all souls on their own pilgrimages. Seldom with a Virgil or a Beatrice to guide them, they often try to guide each other, only to get more turned around. For our pilgrims, progress is on the Wheel of Life, never straight ahead but up, down, over and back and around and around again.
La Divina Caricatura is a graphic novellength performance poem for the stage and a mixed-media musical cartoon feature movie come alive. It is about itself, the very thing that it is: mediathe message-in-itself. It is the Dante we never knew but always knew was there. It is Bunraku theatre for the American sensibility.
About the Author
Lee Breuer is a writer, director, lyricist, filmmaker, and founding co-artistic director of Mabou Mines Theater.