Synopses & Reviews
In an astonishing blend of cultural idioms, Lee Breuer merges the driving rhythms of rock music, the imagery of hotels and drive-ins, and the language of the street with the lyricism of dreams, of memory, of fairy-tale fantasy. The result is what he terms performance poetry” intensely personal works that have evolved from narrative poems into highly original works for the stage. Here, collected for the first time, are Breuers poems into highly original works for the stage. Here, collected for the first time, are Breuers poems and their performance scripts, with details of their stagings under his direction.
The title work of the volume, Sister Suzie Cinema, is a doo-wop opera” inspired by the authors coming of age amidst the pop culture of the 50s. Other works include Haji, a multimedia, one-character collage charting a womans personal pilgrimage; Red Beads, a Halloween fairy tale turned nightmare; Lies!, a jive satire of sex and money; A Prelude to Death in Venice, the saga of a street-smart puppet named John whose life is always a pay-phone call away; and The Warrior Ant, Breuers latest, the Latin/reggae mythical journey of a modern day every ant.”
Critical acclaim for the performance works in this volume
Haji
A haunting poetic monologue.” Stephen Holden, The New York Times
Sister Suzie Cinema
A fantasy about fantasies about the way movies, music and other cultural artifacts shape what we feel.” Jon Pareles, The New York Times
A Prelude to Death in Venice
A stunning theatre piece.” New Statesman
The Warrior Ant
[Breuers] astonishing marriages of disparate elements produce great joy.” Michael Feingold, The Village Voice
Lee Breuer is a founding member of the acclaimed avant-garde company Mabou Mines and the creator of the internationally renowned Gospel at Colonus. He has long been considered one of our most gifted theatrical innovators.
Synopsis
Includes: Sister Suzie Cinema, Hajj, Red Beads, A Prelude to Death in Venice, The Warrior Ant and "The Theatre and Its Trouble," an essay.
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.
Synopsis
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
About the Author
Lee Breuer is a writer, director, lyricist, filmmaker, and founding co-artistic director of Mabou Mines Theater.