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Platonov
Penned at great length when the writer was just 18, Chekhov’s Platonov (never formally titled) was rejected by the actress for which it was written and not produced or published in the author’s lifetime. Yet it prefigures the themes and characters of the later plays, a poetic amalgam of fumbled suicides, frustrated loves, threatened estates,…
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Body
Blessed Unrest’s BODY is subtitled “Anatomies of Being,” the many, or the several, brought together, like cells in the body, in a one entity. It was conceived and directed by Jessica Burr, scripted by Matt Opatrny in collaboration with the ensemble that created it. There were anonymous interviews along the way, and a visual artist,…
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Doruntine
A lot of theater happens because its creators have something to say. But New York’s Blessed Unrest has something to tell. To see them is an act of devotion to the significance of storytelling, psychological, aesthetic, and ideological, and the pleasure to be had from it. They enact not just the allure of the tale…
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A Christmas Carol
Dickens’ Scrooge has always reminded me, at least a little, of Shakespeare’s Lear. There is a similar majesty to his tale, although the outcome is comic rather than tragic, and he is, of course, petty bourgeois instead of royal. In place of vain munificence, it is self-loathing stinginess that afflicts him, and he is brought…
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Eurydice’s Dream
EURYDICE’S DREAM is an apt title for the show by Blessed Unrest currently playing at The Interart Theatre. It signals the sort of reality that will be experienced if you immerse yourself in the play, but is never used as an excuse for incoherence or obscurantism. This collectively developed piece has a recognizable theme that…