I’d like to take a moment to discuss the music that composer Aaron Meicht is creating for Katharsis Theater Company’s upcoming production of Moliere’s MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC.

The original score to M de P. was written by Jean-Baptiste de Lully, court composer to Louis XIV. Moliere and Lully created the comedie-ballet form as a response to the simple fact the Louis had two favorite forms of entertainment: ballet and commedia dell’arte (known in France as Italian comedy). On the several occasions in which Louis commissioned them to create entertainment for a state event, they smartly combined Louis’ two favorite mediums together to create a new- and very strange- theatrical form that consisted of equal parts singing, dancing and farce.

In Katharsis’ production the dancing, the singing and the farce will all be performed by a troupe of between 9 - 11 actors. The choreographer, Parisa Khobdeh, Aaron and I plan to build the dance and the music for the play’s four musical interludes on the highly formalized structure of Lully’s music and renaissance ballet.

Aaron has taken Lully’s original score for M. de P. and is rearranging it for a series of synthesized instruments, drum machines and human voices. He has altered the tempos, added new rhythms and tinkered with the vocal parts. The results are amazing: a musical landscape that is strange, fun, beautiful, disorienting and funny. It perfectly captures the renaissance formality of the original Lully score while re-envisioning that music as something new, exciting and provocative.

Listen to the Overture to M. de P by Aaron Meicht

or check out all the music Aaron has created for the show so far at his website: http://meichtgroup.com/aaronmeicht/MP/.

I think you’ll dig it. 

We are thrilled to announce that our next development cycle will be a new adaptation of Moliere’s comedie-ballet, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. M. de Pourceaugnac is a wild combination of Commedia dell’Arte style farce, ballet and live music. M. de P promises to be a unique, strange and very funny evening of theater.

Katharsis plans to hold two workshops in the 2007/08 season to develop Monsieur de Pourceaugnac. The first, in November 2007, will focus on the adaptation of the script which we plan to develop primarily through improvisation. The second, in March 2008, will focus on the live music and dance. We plan to produce the full production of Monsieur de Pourceaugnac in the fall of 2008.  

I will post items that discuss the script, the music and the dance in greater detail in the coming weeks.  I hope you’ll check back here periodically to learn more about this exciting project.

Jacques Callot (1592-1635) engraving of a Commedia dell’Arte scene

Costume design for Louis XIV as The Rising Sun, from the final entrée of Le Ballet de la Nuit (1653).

It is now nearly six weeks since The Polish Play closed. I went out for drinks this past weekend with many of the PP actors. It was great to see everyone again. Hanging out with them brought the show back to life for me and led me to think that I should finally get around to posting a post-show post.

I was really happy with The Polish Play. It was a project that meant an enormous amount to me personally. It turned out to be more or less exactly what I had hoped and imagined it would be. The response we received from audiences and critics was amazing and I was thrilled that the show was able to extend for two weeks.

I was also really excited by the process of creating The Polish Play. Altogether, I spent four years working on it: from its earliest conception at a temp job, through the adaptation of the script, to various readings and the workshop, and then finally the ultimate production. More than anything else, I think the time that The Polish Play spent in gestation separated it from other projects that I have worked on and led to a richness of detail that would not have been possible otherwise. I have come out of this project firmly committed to the idea of using extended development cycles to create future Katharsis shows.

I am currently mulling over possibilities for the next Katharsis development cycle. I hope to make a decision in the next few months and am aiming to do a workshop this fall and mount our next production in late spring, 2008. Possibilities include an adaptation of a Moliere comedy-ballet, a production of Othello focusing on 19th Century performance techniques or a Tennessee Williams drama. I’ll let you know…

We are thrilled to announce a two week extension of THE POLISH PLAY through February 17th. Here is the performance schedule for the rest of the run:

Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8pm.

Sunday, February 11th at 2pm and 7pm.

There will be no performances on Sunday, February 4th or February 18th. Tickets for the extension are $25. All performances will be held at the Walker Space, 46 Walker Street in Manhattan.

For more information, please click on The Polish Play Show Info button in the top right corner of this page.

We hope to see you at the theater.

If you’re interested in reading what the critics have to say about THE POLISH PLAY here are some excerpts and links:

Flavorpill: “If you’re familiar with both plays, the witty intertwining of the two is most impressive. For those of us a like shaky on our ‘pataphysics, an onstage deadpan Foley artist in Chucks, a shitload of poop jokes, and a gruesomely inventive puppet massacre are more than sufficient to command attention and awe.”

http://nyc.flavorpill.net/search?start=0&g=true&q=polish+play 

Showbusiness Weekly: “For anyone who can appreciate the subtle nuance of a well-placed wet willy on the battlefield, THE POLISH PLAY is just what the doctor - or in this case, the greedy, murderous Polish king - ordered.”

http://www.showbusinessweekly.com/archive/420/PolishPlay.shtml

Backstage (Pick):

http://www.backstage.com/bso/news_reviews/nyc/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003535404 

New Theater Corps: www.newtheatercorps.blogspot.com

The Gothamist: http://nyc.flavorpill.net/search?start=0&g=true&q=polish+play

L Magazine (in which the reviewer confesses her “stage crush” on Foley Guy): http://www.thelmagazine.com/5/2/theater/feature2.cfm?ctype=2

We had a great opening last night with a large and very responsive audience and champagne/vodka in the theater after the show. Reviews should trickle in slowly over the next two weeks. Here is an early review from Ronald Gross of the New York Theater Buying Guide.

THE POLISH PLAY

Review by Ronald Gross

New York Theater Buying Guide

BOTTOM LINE: Our highest recommendation! A hilarious romp which combines Shakespeare’s Macbeth with Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, the first absurdist drama. Ubu is a greedy gluttonous, obese buffoon who enacts Macbeth’s rise and fall with stunning moments of authentic tragic feeling. Director Henry Wishcamper, one of the most creative presences in New York theater today, works miracles in the staging — his resourcefulness runs rings around uptown theater’s “special effects.” But there’s more here than hilarity. Ubu’s murderousness vividly calls to mind the works of Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, and other tyrants of our time. The Polish Play is as relevant as it is comic. This is a true adventure in theater-going, an exhilarating experience in seeing our reality transformed into art.

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It’s “The Polish Play,” of course, because of the theater tradition that no one involved in a production of Macbeth is permitted to utter the name of the play while in the theater, lest it cure the company. (If they do, tradition dictates that they must leave the theater and spit three times outside before returning.)

Well, here’s a fat Polish slob (apologies to the Polish Anti-Defamation League) who is told by three witches that he “will be Thane of…Cracow.”

You very rewardingly get to see a stream-lined version of Macbeth — but occasionally the plot swerves off into Jarry’s antic script, especially at the finale which is a knock-out.

Jordan Gelber commands the stage as Pere Ubu (he won a special Outer Critics Circle Award for his work in Avenue Q). In the intimate theater space, you are close enough to him to shiver at his malevolence even as you are laughing at his ludicrousness.

Mere Ubu (Lady Macbeth) is stunningly portrayed by Dana Smith-Croll. She’s a match for her abusive husband, and in fact twirls him around her finger until, of course, she sleep-walks into lunacy herself.

Jacob Knoll is a hardy and poignant Banquo, and his come-back as a ghost is more frightening than usual, in his Night of the Living Dead rendition.

Lucas Caleb Rooney is a delightfully daffy King Wenceslas (Duncan in Macbeth) who keeps falling asleep on his feet; Torsten Hillhouse is a rousing MacDuff; and Eunice Wong is utterly winning as Bougrelas (Wenceslas’ son who avenges his death) and as Lady MacDuff in a truly moving death-scene.

The Polish Play is an important theatrical work, and one of the best bargains on the New York stage today.

The show is now up and running. Last night was our third preview as we rapidly approach Friday’s opening. The show is in great shape: all of the design elements look and sound fantastic and the performances of all nine actors are amazing.

I hope those of you who have been following this blog or happen upon it between now and February 3rd will come down to the Walker Space to check us out. I promise you there is nothing else quite like it. Tickets are available at:

https://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showCode=POL0.

Here’s a couple of production photos. I’ll post more soon.

Jordan Gelber as Pere Ubu and Dana Smith-Croll as Mere Ubu

Torsten Hillhouse, Eunice Wong and Jeff Biehl as the Weird Sisters

Puppets play a central role in this production. There are four major puppet sequences: a gruesome puppet massacre, a heroic puppet race, a mystical visitation of Bougrelas’ ancestors and a series of spooky apparitions conjured by the Weird Sisters. Puppets also appear in a variety of other roles throughout the play. Our puppet designer, Aleksandra Maslik, and puppet construction expert, Lung-Kuei Lin, have created puppets in a variety of styles: marionettes, hand puppets, two dimensional foamcore cut-outs, etc. They are alternatively funny, beautiful and gruesome.

Here’s a copy of Aleksandra’s original sketch for the puppet racer, Michel Federovitch, and a publicity shot we have taken with Jordan Gelber, who plays Pere Ubu, and Michel:

Another important element of The Polish Play is the live Foley sound effects that accompany and underscore the action of the play. The entire sound-scape of The Polish Play will be created live by our Foley Artist, the actor James Bentley. Jim, Bart Fasbender (our sound designer), the rest of the cast and I have been working throughout the rehearsal process to match various sound effects to each moment in the play that requires some sort of noise. During the performance of the play, Jim will be in full view of the audience at a Foley table in the downstage left corner of the stage. The audience will be able to watch Jim as he creates the wide varieties of sound that comprise the aural landscape of The Polish Play.

At least once a week, Bart brings another box of musical instruments, time-tested Foley objects and electronic devices into the rehearsal hall. This week’s batch was especially fun. It included an electronic windmachine (capable of creating a myriad of sound effects simply by waving one’s hand through the air above it), a thunder tube (a simple card board tube with a metal string attached that produces a surprisingly loud thunder effect), oatmeal (for snow), chains (for soldiers’ marching), a cricket devise and an owl whistle (to set up the line ‘I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry’) and a pair of whoopee cushions that have completely transformed Act 4, Scene 4.

Eunice Wong, who plays Bougrelas and Lady MacDuff, sent me an excerpt from War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by the veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges that I would like to share with you:

“Late one night, unable to sleep during the war in El Salvador, I picked up Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It was not a calculated decision. I had come that day from a village where about a dozen people had been murdered by the death squads, their thumbs tied behind their backs with wire and their throats slit.

I had read the play before, but in my other life as a student. A thirst for power at the cost of human life was no longer an abstraction to me. It was part of my universe. I came upon Macduff’s wife’s speech made when the murderers, sent by Macbeth, arrive to kill her and her small children: “Whither should I fly?” she asks,

I have done no harm. But I remember now/

I am in this earthly world - where to do harm/

Is often laudable, to do good sometime/

Accounted dangerous folly.

These words seized me like furies and cried out for the dead I had seen lined up that day in a dusty market square, the dead I have seen since, the dead, including the two thousand children who were killed in Sarajevo. These words cried out for those whom I would see later in unmarked mass graves in Bosnia, Kosova, Iraq, the Sudan, Algeria, El Salvador, the dead who are my own, who carried notebooks, cameras, and a vanquished idealism and sad addiction into war and never returned. Of course resistance is usually folly, of course power exercised with ruthlessness will win, of course force easily snuffs out gentle people, the compassionate, and the decent…

Shakespeare reminds us that though we may not do what we want, we are responsible for our lives. It does not matter what has been made of us; what matters is what we ourselves make of what has been done to us.”

I continue to think about Hedges’ words and his insight into the nature of violence, our inability as societies to stop it and the need in the face of humanity’s darkest crimes to accept accountability for our own lives and actions. I hope that in some way The Polish Play will speak to these same truths.