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The News
Transcendence and Loss: Undermain's Black
Monk
by Alexandra Bonifield / www.opednews.com
“Those who warn against ecstasy are spellbound by modern
society,” declares the Black Monk in Anton Chekhov’s
novella of the same name. Functioning as metaphor for the pursuit
of lofty goals and transcendent imagination, the character plays
catalyst for debate between validation of a mystical existence v.
common sense pursuit of tangible reality. When playwright David
Rabe adapted...
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Theater Review: 'The Black Monk' brings
out the best in the Undermain Theatre
By LAWSON TAITTE / The Dallas Morning News
Genius lies next to madness, or so many generations, especially
the Romantics, believed. You've never seen the idea brought to life
in such startling fashion as in The Black Monk.
Undermain Theatre opened David Rabe's adaptation of the Anton
Chekhov story Friday, and it may be the most sensitive and assured
production in the company's 25-year history.
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Undermain Theatre launches David Rabe drama
'The Black Monk,' based on Chekhov piece
By LAWSON TAITTE / The Dallas Morning News
Turning out a new Chekhov play takes nerve: The Russian master,
after all, died in 1904. David Rabe, though, has always done bold
things.
The playwright, 69, launched his career with a ferocious trilogy
of plays about the Vietnam War. His most famous piece, Hurlyburly,
which he also helped turn into a 1998 movie, peers fearlessly into
the dark world of sex and drugs in Hollywood.
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Ecstatic revelation powers Black Monk at Undermain
Review by Martha Heimberg, Turtle Creek News
Director Katherine Owens has amazingly recreated an evening of
19th century Russian-style ecstasy – in nature and in art
– in Undermain Theatre’s heavy-columned basement space.
A candle-lit drawing room, an exquisite violinist accompanied by
a pianist and a lovely singer take us to another place and time
to hear Purcell and Braga in the drawing room. And in the nether
reaches of the suddenly huge theater the orchard invites the Romantic
wanderer to muse on the transcendence of the spirit through union
with trees and rocks. But can this Romantic-era vision of life’s
purpose be trusted?
In David Rabe’s adaptation of Chekhov’s short story
The Black Monk, the poetic young scholar Kovrin (Jonathan Brooks)
returns from studying philosophy in Moscow to his childhood environs
in the glorious Russian countryside. He is greeted warmly by his
friend Tanya (Shannon Kearns-Simmons) and her father Yegor (Bruce
DuBose), a kindly and determined man who has won many national awards
for his grand orchards and farming techniques. Yegor took Kovrin
in when his artist-mother died of tuberculosis, and hopes –
not so secretly – that the young man will one day marry Tanya
and take over his beloved orchard.
Thin and on edge with a sense of coming revelation, Kovrin feels
joyful and exuberant in the natural surroundings. He is so at ease
that he actually experiences a vision of The Black Monk (Newton
Pittman), a legendary figure the young man has been researching,
who supposedly returns in 1,000-year intervals to reveal a grand
truth to his beholder. But what is Kovrin to make of the Black Monk’s
words? And how is he to deal with a new bride who longs to live
in a big city? And he must confront a father-in-law with an agenda
for conferring his own life work onto the younger man’s shoulders.
Chekhov’s head always questions such visionary insights into
nature and man – while his heart clearly belongs in the Romantic
camp. Rabe’s dialogue is fresh and compelling, and the cast
fully embodies the grand passions, tantrums, despair and spiritual
longing of Chekhov’s extraordinary characters.
Brooks burns from within in his role as the poet, torn between
flesh and spirit. Dubose is charming, funny, and earthy and a marginal
tyrant as Tanya’s father, and Kearns-Simmons literally throws
herself into the beauteous and high-strung Tanya, a woman in love
with a poet more enamored of the vision he has invented himself.
The elegant set design mixing drawing room and orchard is the work
of John Arnone, lit by Steve Woods. The rich and evocative period
costumes are designed by Bryan Wofford. This is a show you won’t
want to miss.
In memory of Lynne Alvarez
Undermain Playwright in Residence
Poet, Playwright, Friend
Lynne
Alvarez was widely admired - especially among her peers. Mac Wellman
introduced us to her when she came to Dallas for treatment and asked
us to do one of her plays. She said that she would like to write
a new play and that play became The Snow Queen. Her book
Plays by Lynne Alvarez: Later Plays and Selected Poems was
just published in 2008. It made her very happy to get that finished
before she got really ill. Also, the Dallas Public Library gladly
accepted her archive which she assembled for them. Apart from her
extraordinary insight and vitality, one really remarkable thing
about Lynne was the fact that she continued to write even while
her illness ravaged the speech centers in her brain. In addition
to her work on The Snow Queen she advised us on all manner of literary
issues and helped move the company into an entirely new understanding
of dramatic literature and our role in its formation. She was our
first playwright in residence. She was still advising us until a
month before she died. Her loss to us is incalculable.
-Katherine Owens, Artistic Director, Undermain Theatre
Lynne Alvarez - Bio
Lynne Alvarez recently served as creative consultant for Undermain
Theatre’s production of Neil Young’s Greendale
and last season (0708) she wrote The Snow Queen for Undermain.
She arrived in New York in 1977 planning to be a hot shot poet
and die young. In the first matter - she won a CAPS grant for
poetry in 1979 and served on the Poets & Writers board of
directors for ten years - as Vice President of the board for four
years. She did succeed in publishing much poetry, giving many
readings and had two books of poetry published by Waterfront Press
– the dreaming man (1981) and living with numbers
(1986) and became a member of PEN. But in the second matter she
continued to live and her attention turned abruptly to playwriting
in 1978. 
On a whim, Alvarez accompanied a friend to a gathering of Hispanic
writers at Miriam Colon’s Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.
At 31 she had never thought of writing a play, but she was now hooked.
She wrote two plays under the auspices of this workshop - Graciela,
which was presented by the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and The
Guitarron, which premiered at the St. Clements Theatre in 1984
and won her an NEA fellowship and entry into New Dramatists. It
was first published in 1985 in TCG’s anthology, On New
Ground.
She was a member of New Dramatists for seven years (1979-1987)
and continues to be a proud alumna of the same. There she wrote
several plays including Hidden Parts (1981) which won a Kesselring
Award in 1983 and premiered at Primary Stages later that year; The
Wonderful Tower of Humbert Lavoignet, which won two awards –
The Le Compte de Nouey Award in 1984 and an FDG/CBS Award for Best
Play and later Best Production at Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany,
NY in 1984/85. In 1984 The Actor’s Theatre of Louisville commissioned
a one--act play which became Thin Air: Tales from a Revolution.
Thin Air premiered at San Diego Repertory Theater in 1987
and won a Drama League Award and a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1988.
Two New York Foundation grants followed in 1994 and 1998, years
in which she also wrote three plays for San Francisco’s ACT
Conservatory-The Reincarnation of Jaimie Brown, Eddie/Mundo/Edmundo
and Analiese. All three premiered there and were published
variously in the Smith & Kraus anthologies Best plays by
Women 1994 and Best Plays by Women 1997, and Best
Plays for Young Audiences. Lincoln Center Institute commissioned
Alvarez to adapt And Now Miguel (produced in its 1995 season).
The Repertory of St. Louis also commissioned two children’s
plays which they produced in 1991 and 1992 - Rats, a musical
based on the Pied Piper of Hamlin, and Rikki Tikki Tavi.
Smith & Kraus published her Collected Plays, Vol.I in
2000.
Alvarez
was commissioned as a translator of plays and poetry as well.
In 1988, she translated Fernando Arrabal’s new play The
Damsel and the Gorilla or The Red Madonna for INTAR’s
production. In 1990 she translated and adapted Tirso de Molina’s
Don Juan of Seville for Classic Stage Company‘s New
York production and most recently translated three plays of the
Mexican playwright, Felipe Santander. These were published as
a collection by Smith & Kraus in 2002 and were subsidized
for a three-year period (1999-2002) by grants from The Peter Sharp
Foundation and The Evelyn Sharp Foundation.
Alvarez also received a two-year grant (2000-2002) from the Guggenheim
Museum’s Works & Process program to write Deux Mariages:
Romola and Nijinsk, which premiered at Primary Stages in New
York in May 2003 and has been published in Smith & Kraus’s
anthology Best Plays by Women 2001 and as an individual play
by Broadway Publishing in 2004.
In 2006, Alvarez worked on a commission for the Minneapolis Children’s
Theater called Esperanza Rising. The play and the production
were named the best new play and production for 2006 by The Minneapolis
Star-Tribune. In 2007, Alvarez wrote The Snow Queen: a fairytale
for strange adults for Undermain Theatre. A second volume of
her collected plays, The Plays of Lynne Alvarez: Later Plays
and Selected Poems was published in 2008. Esperanza Rising
was performed in the summer 2008 at the Goodman Theatre’s
Latino Theatre Festival
The Dallas Morning News:
Theater
Review: Undermain Theatre's Eurydice is delightfully entertaining
"Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, now receiving
a luminous, exquisitely refined production at Undermain Theatre...
delightfully entertaining, especially so thanks to the Undermain
actors' masterly performances under director Bruce DuBose... Ms.
Munoz and Mr. Brooks make an achingly romantic couple, and Mr. Pittman
and Mr. Williams are wonderfully vivid... The show looks and sounds
stunning... thanks to superb designs all round... With Eurydice,
it's not really that Undermain has moved toward the mainstream.
No, mainstream American theater has finally caught up to the capacities
of Undermain." -Lawson Taitte, The Dallas
Morning News
The Dallas Morning News:
Monkey:
The Quest to the West amplifies the spirit of a Chinese classic
Lively, comic Monkey enlightens at Undermain
Review by Martha Heimberg, The Turtle Creek News
Performance artists Laura Jorgensen and Fred Curchack
are up to some crazy – and amazingly athletic -- monkey business
at Undermain Theatre! Monkey: The Quest to the West, created
and performed by the two actors, is based on a 16th century Chinese
fantasy narrative titled Monkey: Record of a Journey to the West,
a vernacular novel of 100 chapters by Wu Cheng-en about the pilgrimage
to India of a Buddhist priest helped along his journey by a fabulous
stone monkey, the earthy hero of the work.
Assisted only by a tambourine and various bells and cymbals, the
actors dive into this extravagant tale. In white kung fu outfits
(made in Pakistan, according to Curchack) the two high-energy performers
portray some 40 different characters that Monkey encounters following
his birth out of a magical pregnant rock that bursts open to reveal
a stone monkey (Jorgensen) with a single-minded need to live forever.
This wildly manic quest for immortality shapes the story –
and takes the brilliant and fearless monkey hero all over heaven
and earth on his pilgrimage.
Of course, it’s nuts that a monkey seeks the spiritual enlightenment
of immortality – but you gotta love this ape’s determination.
Jorgensen huffs and jumps around like a proud monkey when he bravely
steps through a waterfall and finds a Happy Land for his people.
She kneels humbly before a great teacher – or stands face-to-face
with the Demon King – whatever it takes. Thrown into the underworld,
Monkey’s all jungle bravado, “You zombies want a piece
of Monkey – come on!”
Monkey may not have a scholar’s knowledge of the higher worlds,
but he has a poor animal’s appreciation of reality: “If
you’re not honest and you’re not true, you’re
just a pile of monkey poo!” he tells his people – for
he becomes the “handsome Monkey King.” Our hero gets
a little obsessed with weapons power – a hilarious rant on
a collapsible magic sword! -- but manages to get back on track.
And Monkey isn’t settling for some religious ritual –
Dao, Tao, whatever. If it’s not gonna make him immortal, then
forget it. This ape wants off the birth-death-rebirth merry-go-round!
Curchack plays all the demons, monkey children, heavenly maidens,
celestial warriors, dragons (my favorite) and enlightened teachers
Monkey confronts in his travels – and the actor never confuses
us as to which role he’s stepped into for a minute. He’s
funniest – and most telling – as the know-it-all master
furiously telling Monkey, “Action is an illusion, you mindless
monkey, you stupid, stinkin’ simian!” For Monkey can
bring out the ire in even the most spiritual of teachers.
Half the fun of this breathless show, which runs 105 minutes with
intermission, is the helter-skelter speed with which the action
moves forward. We wing along from adventure to adventure with our
magical performers, never worried about plot development –
it’s a journey – or some fine nuance of character. Monkey’s
on a mission – and if we find ourselves laughing out loud
at some of the bureaucrats and spiritual shenanigans he encounters
– well, then, we are sharing in our hero’s hard-earned
enlightenment.
Monkey: The Quest to the West runs Thursdays through Saturdays
through October 18 at Undermain Theatre, 3200 Main Street. For tickets,
call 214-747-5515 or go to www.undermain.org.
The Dallas Morning News:
Discussion:
Neil Young's Greendale from pop music and theater perspectives
The New York Times:
Morphing Neil Young for the Stage and Page
Broadway.tv:
Neil Young's Greendale Staged At Ice Factory Festival
Theater Mania:
Neil
Young's Greendale to Be Part of Ice Factory Festival
A Woman of Distinction Among
Us
Katherine Owens was chosen in 2008 as a
Woman of Distinction by the Dallas branch of American
Association of University Women. She was saluted at a reception
on April 26, 2008. |