"I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest-- I too awaited the expected guest." T.S. Eliot The first danztheatre piece I ever create outside of college was an adaptation of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland. I fell in love with the poem in undergrad at Roosevelt University. Reading it the first time, I felt it read like a Shakespearean drama. After graduating grad school, I was eager to start working on a full length evening theatre piece, but what? I thought back to The Wasteland and this was it. I was calling me. The first workshop production was in 2001 and then in 2002, restaged the adaption along with an installation piece, Death's Dream Kingdom (also based on Eliot's work). From there, we toured The Wasteland in Chicago and in Canada. I've always wanted to restate and work the piece and now, 13 years ago, here we are. Technology has changed. I've changed. The themes of The Wasteland have not changed. When I first did the piece, we had a slide projector and very minimal lights. Now, we are using a video projector, original illustrations from David Sarallo and our lighting is still minimal but illuminating. T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, will be restaged and revisited with a cast of four illuminating “the lost generation” of post-WWI European society and the human soul’s search for redemption using Adler’s unique style of danztheatre that blends together dance, theatre, music and video imagery into a visceral theatre experience. Written in a stream of consciousness, it seeks out what humans are looking for, a constant connection in life. Once we accept our future, there is an inner calming that happens to our soul. The Chicago Tribune wrote, “Adler gently joins artistic forces, even to the point of making the exposed-brick walls of the space speak with a wizened sense of melancholy. When the shadows of the four ensemble members unobtrusively get superimposed on, say an image of a dead tree facing a treacherous sea…conveys in a tactile, aesthetically gorgeous way, the mystical power of fragmented moments weaving through our minds.” Get your tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/606715 $15 in advance (includes the performance of Still Small Voices)
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April 2021
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