March 26, 2010
by C.J. Ehrlich
Maybe you last read Dante’s Divina Commedia in college, or maybe you got as far as “Abandon all hope ye who enter here,” and did. Perhaps you’ve spent a few hours hooked on the gory new video game, Dante’s Inferno. Well it’s time to get out of the den and take a fresh look at the master and his works. What better way than an evening in the West Village of hot-off-the-presses-original theatre, a night of short plays created by the energetic Brooklyn Playwrights Collective.
The who?
This scrappy group of playwrights from Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and yes, even the northern borough of Westchester, is one of a new mold of collaborative playwriting groups seeking to develop new work by turning the tables on the New York theatre “system.” Rather than sit back and wait for rejections—with many productions in between, mind you—for five years now, the BPC has produced a yearly “alphabet festival” themed around the works of a single playwright. After Artaud, Beyond Brecht and Confronting Chekhov have been followed this year by Dramatizing Dante. OK. Dante was a poet, but his work is so dramatic, it warranted revisiting those exquisite visions of eternal torment and salvation.
Divining Dante, a quick refresher
Dante’s Divine Comedy, for those of us who skipped Italian Lit sophomore year, takes us on a tour of the Inferno with Virgil as a guide. Here sin, there sin, everywhere sin, sin, and oh, the fires, and the gnashing of teeth. (To my way of thinking, if there’s food porn and travel porn, the Inferno was religio-porn, a church-sanctioned epic allowing people to gawk at the salacious aspects of life, while feeling morally superior, since the sinners are severely punished. No wonder Dante was a best seller. Plus, there were no video games in those days.)
Act One offers guided tours of Hades. In Maria Micheles’ Dante in the Dark a man turns his girlfriend on to Dante, only to ignite her sudden thirst for vengeance. Al Lefcowitz’s Endless Hearing in the Fifth Circle posits a special ring of torment for long-winded bureaucrats. Kate Bell’s Seventh Circle, Second Ring is such dark poetry about a young woman’s struggle with body image, you’ll want to run home to hug your teenager. And for a personal tour of Hell, look no further than Alaina Hammond’s A Salt on U.S. Soil and Marcus Haupt’s Marcus’ Inferno.
Act Two, lighter and more comedic, catches up with Dante in Purgatory and Paradise, and places unknown. Dante’s tour guide Virgil handed him off in Purgatory to the woman of his dreams (and only his dreams), Beatrice. (Dante met Beatrice once, when they were both eight, and obsessed about her for the rest of his life. It led to some fine art.) C.J. Ehrlich’s The Ninth Circus of Hell touches on Dante’s “courtly” love for his muse. Peter Dizozza provides a sweet and haunting musical interlude with The Afterdeath: An Intermezzo with Francesca and Paolo. And suffice to say Philip Kaplan’s Dante’s Inferno: The Motion Picture will have you chuckling at the dark depths of gross and net in the movie industry.
On terra firma, Lisa Giordano hits a touching note in a hospice with Living Will, and Jerry Polner’s comedy Florence Farewell shows the actual Dante in the midst of the Guelph’s uncivil war, striving for an audience with the Pope.
In between performances, patrons are invited to contribute sins to a Confession Box. The most shocking, funniest or most original sin will be shared with the audience, and one lucky sinner will receive absolution (and a prize) from the BPC.
It should be a hellacious evening, good provocative fun.
Brooklyn Playwrights Collective proudly presents
The Fifth Annual Festival of New Works:
DRAMATIZING DANTE
Works Inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy
Sunday, March 28 at 7:00 p.m.
Manhattan Theater Source
177 MacDougal St., New York, NY 10011
Tickets: $15 - $18, available at theatresource.org or (866) 811-4111
This year’s festival offers an eclectic night of theatre including:
A Salt on U.S. Soil by Alaina Hammond
Dante in the Dark by Maria Micheles
Florence, Farewell by Jerry Polner
The Ninth Circus of Hell by C.J. Ehrlich
Living Will by Marcy Wallabout
Seventh Circle, Second Ring by Kate Bell
Marcus’ Inferno by Marcus Haupt
Dante’s Inferno: The Motion Picture by Phil Kaplan
The Afterdeath by Peter Dizozza
Endless Hearing In The Fifth Circle by Al Lefcowitz.
C.J. Ehrlich is a mom and freelance writer living in Chappaqua. A proud member of the Brooklyn Playwrights Collective, she, between rejections, has had her one-act plays performed in four states, one province and Brooklyn, N.Y.
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