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Axios
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Axios
Third Horizon Film Festival filmmaker spotlight: Natalia Lassalle-Morillo on reimagining "Antigone"
Among the nearly two-dozen films, shorts and documentaries included in the Third Horizon Film Festival programming is " En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy (Part I)," an experimental film by Puerto Rican artist and director Natalia Lassalle-Morillo. Why it matters: The film, a reimagination of the Greek myth of Antigone through the lens and perspective of the Puerto Rican diaspora living in New York City, is the only Puerto Rican film in this year's festival. The big picture: The idea for the film began in the midst and aftermath of Hurricane Maria, the 2017 Category 4 hurricane that caused catastrophic damage to the island. Lassalle-Morillo had left just one month prior to study in California. "It was very strange," she told Axios. "I wasn't living the embodied experience of what it's like to go through this catastrophe in person, but I was still living this different experience." Between the lines: Lassalle-Morillo was born and raised in Puerto Rico, but lived in New York as a young adult before moving to Miami, where she was "offered a very welcoming community of people and artists who were receptive to the ideas I was bringing that I didn't feel elsewhere." "I have a very intimate and profound connection to Miami," where she said she came to understand herself as a Caribbean person, not just a Puerto Rican. Zoom in: In the aftermath of the storm, Lassalle-Morillo began reading Greek mythology and the story of Antigone stuck with her. The play explored who had control of memory and who had the right to be remembered. It led her to think about what the tragedy would look like in the context of a post-Maria moment. What they're saying:"I wanted to reimagine this play as a portal to think about memory, about tragedy and moving beyond these cycles of tragedies," she said. "The impetus was to create a space for Puerto Ricans who have had to migrate, and those who have chosen not to, to come together and think and create together," she added. How it works: The five-woman cast (which includes Lassalle-Morillo) is made up of non-professional actors who reside in New York City. The women underwent acting classes and training to make the film; the final product is a record of that experience. "All of them chose a character in the play and rewrote it based on their experiences and desires," Lassalle-Morillo said. Zoom out: While the film is anchored in the Puerto Rican experience, Lassalle-Morillo says it's a film for "anyone who's had an experience of displacement and migration." She hopes viewers who aren't from Puerto Rico can still have a deep connection to the ideas and feelings expressed in the film. What's next: There's a Part II to this film in the works, Lassalle-Morillo said. She's working on developing it through a similar process — this time with four women in Puerto Rico. Eventually, the two groups will come together to present the play with a live audience. How to watch: The film is screening Saturday at the Koubek Center at 3:15pm, followed by a Q&A with Lassalle-Morillo.
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Oedipus at Colonus/Electra review – a double shot of Sophocles in Sicily
Concurrent London productions recently presented Oedipus as a modern politician pledging a new start (Mark Strong in the West End) and as a distant detective investigating a climate catastrophe that jeopardises Thebans' future (Rami Malek at the Old Vic). Sophocles' late play Oedipus at Colonus, less commonly known, looks not ahead but backwards. This elegiac tragedy finds the exile reaching the end of his life. The 5,000-strong audience at Syracuse's ancient outdoor theatre hear Giuseppe Sartori's barefoot Oedipus before they see him. His wooden staff strikes the steps as he descends among us, down to the front row and on to a stage populated by trees that thicken the woodland around the theatre. 'It seems this place is sacred,' announces Antigone (Fotinì Peluso) at the wanderer's side. That goes for this Sicilian playing space as well as the drama's setting of Colonus, near Athens. Physically frail, Oedipus is approaching his resting place, yet Sartori strikingly shows us a man who steadily grows stronger not weaker in the face of death. Aside from the dependable Theseus (Massimo Nicolini), the inhabitants of Colonus recoil at his arrival, not just because he traipses across the forbidden ground of the Eumenides. Without even introducing himself, his stain is apparent. One local desperately cleans the dirty footprints this ragged stranger leaves behind him. In the play, Oedipus makes sense of, or rather comes to terms with, a past that is unspeakable – literally so, when he begs not to retread the horrific revelations about his parents. Sartori clutches his cloak around himself, as if covering his modesty, only to reveal a bare chest as the events of the earlier tragedy are unpicked. He discovers that he wields a power in choosing the place of his death and can control the outcome of the battle between his sons. But the play's most affecting conflict is internal, as Oedipus finds peace with himself and the staff is tossed to one side: 'I did what I did unknowingly.' Healing and a sense of purification are at the heart of Canadian Robert Carsen's taut production using Francesco Morosi's emotionally direct translation for this season, where plays are performed in Italian with other languages available to audiences via earpieces. Jugs of water are ritually emptied in the orchestra, the space between stage and audience, by the chorus. Or rather, by one of the choruses. As well as the turbulent pack of white-suited men, a sisterhood in verdant gowns arrive to deliver a speech signalling the radiant beauty of Colonus, their words spoken as if intoxicated by its beauty and their bodies posed to evoke green shoots of renewal. The women, too, are given Sophocles' painful yet moving assessment of the inescapability of suffering and death. Only the decision to lend Oedipus some of their choreography strikes an odd note that weakens the mysterious, secretive quality of his transformative death. Carsen balances the contrasting paces of a play which, with the scheme hatched by Creon (a suavely malevolent Paolo Mazzarelli), momentarily grips like a thriller amid the heavily reflective pronouncements. 'Time sees everything,' runs one. As if to remind us, designer Radu Boruzescu's tall trees, planted on a stage of tiered rows akin to the hillside audience's, observe it all throughout. The resilient forest of Colonus is a stark contrast to Gianni Carluccio's set design for Electra, the second tragedy in the season at Syracuse. Carluccio's stage is sloped rather than stepped; much of the drama plays out on a tilted floor that resembles a building's collapsed exterior. The fall of the house of Atreus. The dust-covered piano and busted bedstead give a sense that Electra still resides in a world before the brutal replacement of Agamemnon with Aegisthus at Clytemnestra's side. The windows, at this angle, become open graves; a plaintive string composition reverberates from within alongside the looped sound of broken glass. The scorched slabs at the back of the set begin to resemble fragments, too, of papyri. Under Roberto Andò's direction, this piercing new translation by Giorgio Ieranò sharpens Electra's affinity with the natural world. Her opening speech ('O pure sunlight') is given at the piano. In the title role, Sonia Bergamasco is as indelible as Sartori's Oedipus – her pain similarly twisting through her gestures (one knee is bandaged and she moves like a wounded animal) while her mind logically processes her father's actions. Dressed in ragged grey, she seems to merge with the floor when she lies still but is otherwise a frenzy of rebellion. A similar heat rises from a hair-flicking, often hissing female chorus in shift dresses. The sight of the urn supposedly containing Orestes' ashes is felt in the gut: she crumples from within, tenderly caressing the object as if it was his body. It's frequently asked why Orestes extends Electra's pain, fussily stage-managing his return, but Roberto Latini gives us a brother who after coolly planning the events is stunned by their reunion, almost unable to fathom it himself, fearful of her reaction. The moment is richly complex. Unlike Brie Larson in the recent London production, Bergamasco succeeds throughout in entwining the anger with grief. She is a sardonic match, too, for Clytemnestra (Anna Bonaiuto) who detonates the lines: 'Being a mother is a frightful thing. For as much as they hate you, there is no way to hate your own children.' This Electra is as physically disgusted as Hamlet is by the mother's 'enseamèd bed'. A sense of contest is inseparable from Sophocles' work, which was regularly entered in Athenian competitions, and one of the play's toughest scenes to conquer is Paedagogus's action-packed fabrication detailing Orestes's death in a chariot race. Danilo Nigrelli steers the speech superbly, only the wind to be heard during each pause, its transfixing effect heightened by a chorus who inch closer towards the teller. You almost believe the lie yourself and reach the edge of your seat as Electra's stasis is succeeded by a swift and ruthless revenge. The Greek theatre's summer programme runs until 6 July in Syracuse, Italy. Chris Wiegand's trip was provided by the National Institute of Ancient Drama.
Spectator
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
A cremation caper: Stealing Dad, by Sofka Zinovieff, reviewed
Sophocles's Antigone is a battle over the burial of a body and the war between law and divinity. What rules – the decree of a king or conscience? This is the crux of Sofka Zinovieff's Stealing Dad. When Alekos, a Greek sculptor, is struck down in 2018 by a heart attack and drowns in a London canal, he leaves behind not just a spiky widow, Heather, but seven children and five colourful ex-wives.
Telegraph
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Cate Blanchett's Radio 4 drama is superb, but she shouldn't be banking on any awards
At last month's BBC Audio Drama Awards at Broadcasting House, the actor Jonathan Keeble stepped onstage to accept the award for Best Actor. He was not claiming it for himself, however, but for the somewhat starrier Sean Bean, who had not been able to attend. Tongue firmly in cheek, Keeble praised his Antigone castmate for scooping the award for what was only his second ever radio play, 'while I have starred in more than 900'. Keeble's self-deprecating witticism was intended to highlight the sterling work of director Pauline Harris, who had coaxed such a remarkable performance out of Bean, despite the actor being relatively unfamiliar with the medium and its rhythms. Yet, he also, perhaps inadvertently, got to the heart of British audio drama – it does not live and die on the Sean Beans of this world gracing the airwaves with their undeniable presence, but on the Jonathan Keebles. However, as the future of audio drama is debated and fretted over, and audio big boys such as Audible and Amazon grab a slice of the pie, there has been a recent trend of eye-catching casting. Great British thesps have always relished radio drama – Toby Jones is one in recent years whose on-screen success and prolificness seems not to have dimmed his passion for audio drama – but the recent BBC Radio casting headlines have been glitzier still. We have had no less than Ed Harris, Kim Cattrall and Johnny Flynn starring in the CIA origins drama Central Intelligence. And at the weekend there was double Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett making her radio play debut in Wallace Shawn's The Fever (Radio 4, Saturday). Radio 4 has promised to protect long-form audio drama, following Radio 3's decision to axe the 90-Minute Drama, and who could fail to be seduced by an hour-and-a-half of Blanchett, directed by John Tiffany and Steven Hoggett (the director/choreographer duo responsible for Black Watch and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child)? I imagine the production will have split the Radio 4 audience – not because of Blanchett's performance, which was enthralling, but because Shawn's monologue, first performed in 1990, is a vicious and naked assault on complacent, liberal, bourgeois attitudes and lifestyles, a Dylanesque stream of bile and vomit that the audience/victims are never allowed to turn away from. 'Do you have any poor friends?' spits Blanchett's anonymous traveller at one point. She lies on a hotel room floor in an impoverished country on the cusp of violent civil war; unable to move, she examines her life and values, and finds herself wanting. As a diatribe against capitalism, it occasionally is a little trite (it is, remember, 35 years old, and written at the height of Yuppy New York), but Blanchett brings to life the soirees and the theatre trips, the dinner party debates and the art gallery openings. It is savagely funny. In one moment, she comforts herself that she is a good person with strong values because she once steered the conversation away from being critical of the advertising industry – because her friend's father works in it. Shawn's glee at going for the jugular and his distaste at Upper West Side intelligentsia hypocrisy is still palpable. Whether Blanchett will attend next year's BBC Audio Drama Awards remains to be seen (she will surely be nominated), but if she does, she should not expect to automatically walk away with a win. Central Intelligence was nominated for two awards and, given the presence of Cattrall on the night, those on the shortlists alongside her drama promptly tore up their acceptance speeches. Yet, democracy reigns in British audio drama, and Central Intelligence (which is excellent) won neither Best Original Series nor Best Podcast Audio Drama. Blushes, if there were any, were spared by Central Intelligence taking the Outstanding Contribution award. It's certainly brought in listeners. There is a different hierarchy in audio drama, made stark by Best Original Series going to Al Smith's emergency call-handler drama Life Lines for an impressive fourth time. An eighth series is out this year, which means that while Blanchett must contend with Michelle Yeoh, Andrea Riseborough and Michelle Williams at the Oscars (as she did in 2023), in the world of audio she will do battle with Sarah Ridgeway, Life Lines star. Not a household name, but something approaching royalty in British audio drama circles. However, Blanchett's debut was seductive and superb, melting the 90 minutes away like wax, and if she really wants to quit Hollywood and do something more meaningful with her life, I have a suggestion – star in a few more BBC audio dramas. There may even be an award or two in it for her.
The Guardian
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Athol Fugard was a dreamer, listener and master storyteller – on stage and at home
I feel that Athol Fugard and his wife, Paula Fourie, changed my life in the autumn of 2022 when I visited South Africa to spend time with them and their daughter Halle. We were supposed to be working on a book together, and we did; but our time became so much more than that. There were lunches in the house or the restaurant round the corner; walks in the woods; a braai that went on past midnight. Over coffee in the mornings I'd sit with Athol and we'd use an app on his phone to identify the calls of all the birds in the garden. Then he might tell me a story from his life – the awe he felt when he asked Yvonne Bryceland to smash a chair to bits during rehearsals for Antigone and she proceeded to do so for a full 30 minutes; the journey he made by sea at 18 from Cairo to Japan, when an illiterate Somalian sailor used to watch him every night as he wrote a novel by hand, sitting on a deck hatch; and the way that sailor never spoke to him again when he finished the novel, decided it was terrible, and threw it in the sea. Just once, he told me the story of a play he was planning. He spoke elegantly, carefully, slightly formally; I hardly dared breathe for fear he'd stop. He and I had shared certain extreme experiences, albeit more than half a century apart, which had been formative for both of us, and I think as a result we bonded quite strongly; over the course of my time with him we both cried together, taking one another's hands. And all the time he treated me like I was enough. To receive that from someone whose life had been so vast radically altered my perspective. His partner in creation and fun was Paula, perhaps the most formidably intelligent person I know. The project we were all working on together was, in part, an examination of Athol's flaws. They were relentlessly clear-eyed and analytical in all they did. But they were also two extremely romantic people, to the point where they'd decided to start a family together. Athol remained a dreamer, full of plans to the end. His most striking quality, though, was his endless gratitude, which I think was nurtured by his many years as a practising Buddhist. He felt very lucky to have lived an extraordinary life. I think that life contains an urgent lesson for us. His work is a model for how to resist a regime one detests while remaining committed to the country one loves – a pressing question for a great many people today. In his final public appearance, speaking to an online audience convened by the Society of Authors last year, he shared what I thought might be the key tenet of that project: 'Anger is a withering emotion. It is better to write out of love.' Barney Norris is a playwright and novelist
