Theatre – Linda C. Everson

Man of La Mancha

Linda — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 20:40:55 +0000

Searching for the Stars! Man of La Mancha is a musical by Dale Wasserman based on Miguel de Cervantes modern novel Don Quixote. It’s a play within a play! During the Spanish Inquisition, Cervantes is in prison and puts on a performance about Don Quixote, a madman who is searching for his “impossible dreams”. I saw Richard Kiley perform in this musical on Broadway in the 1970s and William Michals recently at the Arvada Center in CO. What beautiful voices! What a wonderful empowering story!

The wonderful lyrics from The Impossible Dream still resonate in my head.

“To dream the impossible dream… to go where men dare not go. This is my Qwest to follow the STAR, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far… to reach … the UNREACHABLE STAR.”

We all must be Searching for the Stars!

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.

Both Cervantes and Frankl experienced imprisonment in their lives and still found hope! Frankl was in a concentration camp and wrote this book about his beliefs of optimism and having a purpose in life , “no matter how hopeless”…

Keep Searching for the Stars!

Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project

Linda — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 02:08:44 +0000

Annual Holocaust memorial day was on April 8. In commenoration, I recently saw the Colorado Ballet dance performance of Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project . Such a POWERFUL expression of one female Holocaust survivor! The 5 movements showed a progression from the birth of man – Adam & Eve and the Tree of Life, to a wedding celebration, and then quickly transformed into the harrowing scenes of bigotry, isolation, degradation; with dancers depicting crowded train cars and death camps, beatings, gas showers, death, and ultimately… rebirth and survival as the final movement. The ‘circle of life’ theme carried on throughout this emotional performance. See a short clip of this powerful dance where the choreographer Stephen Mills’ premiered Light / The Holocaust & Humanity Project at the Austin Ballet in 2005.

Musicians, dancers, and artists express the “essence of the human experience” in many powerful ways. Coping is difficult and inner strength imperative for survival. I find that performances like Light /The Holocaust & Humanity Project transcend other more popular dances, and these types of themes are influential in my own creation of artwork. Reading, theatre, art movies, and dance all invigorate me. Art influences art!

The Tree of Life is common term used in science, philosophy, mythology, and by many cultures and theologies. It is found in the Book of Proverbs depicting “wisdom” and in the Book of Genesis in relation with Adam and Eve being cast from the Garden of Eden. It can represent the “interconnection of all life on our planet”. The Tree of Life is a powerful metaphor in all art forms. Despite atrocities, life moves on…

Map of Heaven play

Linda — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:08:25 +0000

I just saw the premier of the play Map of Heaven by Michele Lowe at DCPA in Denver. The story is about a rising female artist in New York and her busy physician husband. It isn’t so much a story about art, but instead focuses on relationships and maps, the path one’s life might be taking and how it can be changed irrevocably by an incident. In this story, several lives are sent on different paths after an ethical tragedy. Coincidentally, the artist’s paintings are MAPS! And the physician is a radiologist who looks at ‘maps’ of cellular tissue in mammograms. Except of course he messes up one very badly. Very clever and interesting interplay between the maps of 5 people’s lives. However, I don’t know if agree with one reviewer’s view that the theme was about:

the healing power of art.