Choreographers bring Myth to town
By Stephen Keyes, 
Nov 10, 2006

Theater/dance performance The Myth Project Friday & Saturday, November 10 & 11, 8:30pm La Carpa, Fábrica la Aurora, 110 general/60 pesos students, 154-5222

Myth and man—a roadmap of sorts. Our entrée to the heavens while we’re still mired here on Earth. Joseph Campbell devoted his life to understanding the importance of myth. The rest of us know it, but we never think about it. 

People look to myths, and create myths, to give a context to living in this world, to help make sense of it all. We use myths as signposts pointing the way, one of the things you can count on in life. An idea, a person, a place becomes important to us and in time attains some degree of mythical status. 

The Myth Project, conceived and directed by University of California San Diego (UCSD) professors Patricia Rincon and Liam Clancy, has just closed to good reviews in San Diego and will be performed this weekend at La Carpa in San Miguel. 

This performance event looks into the heart of military training and how that integrates into how we live today, blending storytelling, dance, theater, circus and spectacle as a way to re-embody contemporary and ancient myths.

The Myth Project is an artistic collaboration between directors Rincon and Clancy and artists Rebecca Bryant, Iain Gunn and Bridget Rountree. An original score, composed by Don Nichols, with additional music by The Bologna Ponies Band, adds more depth to the performance. The performers, including director Clancy, will be joined by a dozen dancers, who also sing and walk on stilts, among other things. 

This event is generously funded by a grant from the UCSD Center for the Humanities, under the auspices of the Patricia Rincon Dance Collective. 

For advance tickets or further information, call La Carpa at 415-154-5222.

Leave the kids at home!

Playreaders present The Pillowman

Wednesday & Thursday, November 15 & 16, 7pm

St. Paul’s Parish Hall, Cardo 6

10 pesos

The Playreaders of San Miguel present Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play in 2005 and England’s prestigious Olivier Award for Best Play in 2004. The play has just ended its Broadway run at the Booth Theater, starring Jeff Goldblum and Billy Crudup. New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley says, “Comedies don’t come any blacker than The Pillowman. It’s a spell-binding stunner of a play.… Even those familiar with this British dramatist’s blithe way with murder, mutilation and dismemberment, from works like The Beauty Queen of Leenane and A Skull in Connemara, may be jolted by the events described and simulated so picturesquely in his latest offering. (Advisory note: severed fingers and heads, electric drills, barbed wire and premature burial all figure prominently.)”

Martin McDonagh has garnered four Olivier Awards and four Tony Awards. The playwright is considered “one of the theatrical luminaries of the 21st century,” according to the New Republic. He recently won an Oscar for his first short film Six Shooter and is now working on a major film in Brussels. He is of Irish descent and lives in London.

With echoes of Stoppard, Kafka and the Brothers Grimm, The Pillowman centers on a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is being interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a series of child murders. Reading the role of the writer, Katurian, is Tom King; the “good cop,” Tupolski, is read by Rudy Hornish; Tom Frazee plays the “bad” cop, Ariel; and Tim Johnson portrays Michal, Katurian’s brother. Dic Simandl executes lights and sound, and Fran Rowe Robbins directs.

This play is not for the faint-hearted! The doors of St. Paul’s Parish Hall, Calle Cardo 6, open at 7pm and the play will be begin at 7:30 pm (or earlier if the house fills). A donation of 10 pesos is requested.