Saints' Bones: Devising THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS, Guided by Mary Zimmerman's ARCHAEOLOGY OF PERFORMANCE — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

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Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

Saints' Bones: Devising THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS, Guided by Mary Zimmerman's ARCHAEOLOGY OF PERFORMANCE

Name: Neil Scharnick
Department: Fine Arts
Type of research: Course project

Abstract

Saints' Bones: Devising THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS, Guided by Mary Zimmerman's ARCHAEOLOGY OF PERFORMANCE

Mary Zimmerman's collaborative approach to theatre-making has not only developed a distinctive, easily recognizable production aesthetic, but has also repositioned the actor and director in relation to written text. Her emphasis on rehearsal preceding the written script enhances and highlights the fundamentally heteroglossic nature of theatrical performance—an attribute shared by the source texts for her most successful plays: The Arabian Nights, Metamorphoses, The Secret in the Wings, etc.

In January 2017, a group of Carthage Theatre students, under the direction of Prof. Neil Scharnick, attempted to create an original play in the dramaturgical mode of Mary Zimmerman, based on Alban Butler’s Eighteenth-Century book, The Lives of the Saints. This text enabled the group to practice very nearly everything for which Zimmerman’s plays are known. To start, the play, like its source, is a collection of stories, and those stories are in part about the power of storytelling. The episodic structure encourages multiple-casting and multiple voices in authorship; the play contains magic/miracles/angels that can be staged with imaginative hypertheatricality; and the play serves to “bring near” to the audience a set of worlds that at first seem remote and alien.

The play’s first draft was presented in February, and development of the script continues.

Poster file