Latest news with #Metamorphoses
IOL News
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- IOL News
Andrew Buckland's 'Feedback' is among Cape Town's vibrant theatre offerings this week
Awethu Hleli and Carlo Daniels are set to give a compelling performance in Andrew Buckland's 'Feedback' at the Baxter Theatre Centre. Image: Instagram Feedback South African theatre veteran Andrew Buckland returns as writer and director in this play, assisted by award-winning performer Roshina Ratnam. The cast from Baxter's Fires Burning company includes Carlo Daniels, Awethu Hleli, Nolufefe Ntshuntshe and Lyle October, known for productions such as "La Ronde", "Metamorphoses" and "Othello". The show centres around a murder mystery which becomes a fast-paced and unconventional piece of physical theatre, touching on topics like food consciousness and globalisation. Packed with humour, action and sharp social commentary, it celebrates both human generosity and greed. Where: The Baxter Theatre Centre. When: Runs until August 30. Show times differ. Cape Town Opera: The Barber of Seville Rossini's 1816 comic masterpiece returns with a fresh staging from Cape Town Opera. Bursting with wit and memorable music, this opera buffa follows the schemes of Figaro, played by William Berger and Thando Zwane in alternating performances. Innocent Masuku, who recently debuted as Count Almaviva with the English National Opera, reprises the role alongside Dumisa Masoka. Where: Theatre on the Bay in Camps Bay. When: Runs until Sunday, August 17. Show times differ, depending on the day. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading WGRUV: Letters of Reflection This dance production presents seven original works by Holly and Lex Gruver and a much-loved piece by American choreographer Tyler Gilstrap titled 'Unsquared'. Performed by contemporary ballet-trained dancers, the works explore themes of love, loss, work, relationships, doubt and hope. Where: The Star Theatre at the Homecoming Centre. When: Friday, August 15, at 7.30pm and Saturday, August 16, at 3pm.
Los Angeles Times
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Appreciation: Robert Wilson, who changed everything he touched, was the most influential theater artist of our time
Salzburg, Austria — The news of Robert Wilson's death at age 83 in New York reached me in a Wilsonian way — at the theater and absorbed in the kind of uncompromisingly slow, shockingly beauteous and incomprehensibly time-and-space-bending weirdness Wilson took infinite pleasure in hosting when he made what he called operas. He called everything he staged an 'opera,' whatever that might be. I had already been thinking of Wilson as I checked my text messages during an intermission here at the Salzburg Festival, where Australian director Barrie Kosky has created a pastiche of various Vivaldi arias brilliantly repurposed into a new four-hour opera based on stories from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses.' In what turns out to be a striking reminder of Wilson, Kosky employs acclaimed German actress Angela Winkler in the spoken role of Orpheus, who functions as a narrator for the opera. Winkler happened to have been the mesmerizing star in Wilson's 2011 version of Frank Wedekind's 'Lulu' for the Berliner Ensemble, with a decadently dynamite score by Lou Reed, as unlikely and darkly effective as Vivaldi turns out to be for 'Hotel Metamorphosis.' It almost felt, in fact, like Wilson, with his impeccable timing, had planned his death at the precise moment when the Salzburg Festival, as it unveils this summer's major opera productions, could demonstrate the profound effect an American director has had on the way opera has become the most exalted form of theater. 'Hotel Metamorphosis' was followed Friday night by a new production of Donizetti's 'Maria Stuarda.' The buzz in Salzburg was that this would be the star-making vehicle for American soprano Lisette Oropesa, who recently appeared in Los Angeles Opera's 'Rigoletto' and is, indeed, a thrilling Scottish queen in her fatal, royal clash with mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey. Enter, once more, Wilson. The new production's director, Ulrich Rasche, had a residency at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center on Long Island. In Rasche's very Wilson-like, if somewhat clumsy, concept, the queens and their courtiers are islands unto themselves, tirelessly (and tiresomely) pacing on giant rotating discs. Overhead is a grand rotating disc of bright light. The next night, Salzburg delivered some of the most starkly focused and profound 70 minutes I've spent in an opera house. 'One Morning Turns Into an Eternity' is the latest Peter Sellars and Esa-Pekka Salonen collaboration and this was the second performance of the run, which had opened a week earlier and runs through Aug. 18. Sellars dedicated the performance to the memory of Wilson. Sellars had long proposed the curious combining of Schoenberg's 'Erwartung,' a violently expressionist monodrama for soprano and large orchestra, with the last movement, 'Abschied,' of Mahler's song-symphony 'Das Lied von der Erde.' Both were written in Vienna in 1909. Both concern loss. In 'Erwartung' (Expectation), a woman, grippingly portrayed by Ausrine Stundyte, finds the body of her unfaithful lover. This is a work that changed music, having no repetition, every musical phrase is different — and wondrous. In what now feels like a cosmic connection, Wilson had made his Salzburg Festival debut in 1995, staging 'Erwartung' with Jessye Norman. The text for 'Der Abschied' (The Farewell), taken from an ancient Chinese poem and sung with stunning intensity by Fleur Barron, is a long farewell, the eternity of life's last moment, drawn out, never resolving, the unknown meaning of saying goodbye. Salonen, who gets rivetingly precise playing from the Vienna Philharmonic, joins the two parts of Webern's quiet, sparse Five Pieces for Orchestra, each tiny fragment singing volumes. The full implications of this will require further comment. But in this context, it serves for both Salzburg and Los Angeles, as an incomparable goodbye to Wilson. Neither Sellars nor Salonen ever worked with Wilson. But Sellars told me the lasting effect on him as a young director of Wilson's early works, non-narrative all-night shows in which little happened, but through lighting, design and movement, theater felt like a place for new possibilities. Sellars described Wilson as a kind presence through his life. His mother and Wilson were fast friends. Perhaps Wilson's closest confidant was Beverly Hills philanthropist Betty Freeman, who underwrote several of Wilson's productions, including 'Einstein on the Beach,' the opera he created with Philip Glass. Opera in America can be divided, plain and simple, before 'Einstein' and after 'Einstein.' Wilson always stayed with Freeman when he was in L.A., keeping her up half the night drinking vodka. Salonen described to me being struck by Wilson's wit at one of Freeman's dinners. Salzburg's essential Wilsonian weekend was a reminder of how much more important Wilson — who was born in Waco, Texas, and spent his career in New York — ultimately has proved to Europe, where he got far more support than in America. L.A., however, proved unusally fertile territory. We uniquely championed him and uniquely let him down. There was, of course, 'the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down,' the 12-hour opera with Jessye Norman and David Bowie, commissioned for the legendary 1984 L.A. Olympic Arts Festival. Created in segments by various composers in various world capitals, with connecting segments called Knee Plays by David Byrne, it was to be put together at the Shrine Auditorium. But a last-minute fundraising effort failed to raise a $1-million shortfall and the full production was canceled. The best known of those individual operas from 'the CIVIL warS' was the 'Rome Segment,' with music by Glass. Shortly after the Olympics, over Thanksgiving weekend, 1984, the Los Angeles Philharmonic jumped in and gave a concert performance of the 'Rome Segment,' with Wilson lighting the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Between 2004 and 2008, L.A. Opera become the most supportive American opera company for Wilson, staging his transformative productions of 'Madame Butterfly' and 'Parsifal,' along with presenting 'Einstein on the Beach' at UCLA. Yet another promising L.A. Wilson/Glass collaboration went somewhat afoul with 'Monsters of Grace,' which UCLA commissioned in 1998. An entrancing set of 13 Glass songs to texts by the 13th-century mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi was supposed to serve as the framework for pioneering 21st-century opera with 3D imagery. Unfortunately, the technology was in no way capable of capturing the mystical splendor of Wilson's light and imagery. But Wilson did return to UCLA several more times with traveling shows. For all his abstraction, Wilson could be intensely personal as in his 2013 reading of John Cage's 'Lecture on Nothing' in Royce Hall. Cage had been Wilson's first and most important inspiration for creating a theater outside of normal experience. You entered his world, but once in it, the unexpected was expected to happen. Wilson was adamant about never telling an actor or an audience how to think. In 'Lecture on Nothing,' a vulnerable Wilson allowed Cage to tell him how not to think. Giving meaning to not seeking it may be, beyond all the amazing visuals and striking non sequiturs in his work, Wilson's ultimate message. Politics will always divide us, Wilson liked to say. Religion will always divide us. But there is the possibility that theater can bring us together. As early as 1969, Wilson was bringing us together when he mounted the first of what he then called his silent operas in New York at the Anderson Theater — originally an East Village venue for Yiddish theater in the 1950s and a decade later as Fillmore East, for rock bands. Wilson's 'King of Spain' drew both crowds, and he once told me an older woman said to him on her way out, 'Sonny, I don't know what this is. What I do know is that it is turkey.' But, Wilson marveled, she came back the second night. Wilson changed everything he touched and as Salzburg, with incomparable help from Angelenos, his legacy remains essential to a world ever more divided by politics and religion. A second Olympics arts festival of some sort is around the corner in three short years. I hope we're paying attention.
Scotsman
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
A poem and a mistake - freaky Friday meets the classics at Fringe
A desk, a chair, a microphone and one female body. US playwright Cheri Magid is set to take audiences at The Edinburgh Fringe on a magical rollercoaster ride of transformation gender, sexuality, and desire, with the UK premiere of her critically-acclaimed play, A Poem and a Mistake. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Directed by respected Mexican-American theatre, television, and film director Michelle Bossy and performed by award-winning actor Sarah Baskin, A Poem and a Mistake blasts into the Scottish capital this Summer for a run at The Assembly Rooms from July 31 to August 24. This whiplash black comedy tells the story of Myrrha, an eager grad student, as she challenges her professor about the fifty sexual assaults in Ovid's Metamorphoses. When he profoundly misunderstands her, their physical altercation suddenly transforms him into a version of Myrrha and plunges him into the stories themselves. Immersed in an Ovidian landscape, the two face a magical and terrifying confrontation with their own gender, sexuality, and desire. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sarah Baskin dynamically morphs into gods, goddesses, boyfriends, girlfriends, tricksters and fiends, transporting the audience from a classroom to the mythic realm and everywhere in between. Freaky Friday meets the classics in this whiplash black comedy that cuts to the duality in all of us: aggressor and victim, teacher and student, god and mortal. A Poem and a Mistake Writer Cheri Magid says: 'It's head-spinning to think that the second most adapted book in Western literature has all these assaults in it that have been translated out and made consensual. It's enough to make you swear off romcoms altogether. But Sarah and I both felt that the best way to upend patriarchal story tropes was with pratfalls, Bugs Bunny-like chase scenes and karaoke. And the audience reactions so far have shown us that they are there to laugh as much as to think and feel.' Cheri Magid writes for theatre, television, film and opera. Her plays have been seen in New York at Primary Stages, New Georges, The New Group, The Women's Project and Rattlestick, regionally in the US at South Coast Rep, People's Light and Theatre Company, The Road Theatre Company and Cincinnati Playhouse among others, and internationally at Austrailan Center for Contemporary Art in Melbourne and the Museum of Asian Art in Corfu, Greece. She also wrote on the Emmy award-winning children's show Arthur and is an Associate Arts Professor of Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch. Sarah Baskin is an award-winning actor and filmmaker from Montreal, now based in NYC. Recent screen work includes A Family Affair (Netflix, opp. Zac Efron), Ramy, Gossip Girl (HBO), The Equalizer (opp. Queen Latifah), and indie films screened at Sundance, Cannes, TIFF, Telluride, and NYFF. On stage, she's worked with Roundabout, 59E59, Urban Stages, American Repertory Theatre, and more. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad She thrives in new play development, with favorite collaborations including Joan Tewkesbury (Retrospective), Hannah Rittner (The Unbelievers, Three Women Mourn the Apocalypse), and Cheri Magid, with whom she co-created A Poem and a Mistake.. As a director, her debut short Les Câlins Cheaps (Cheap Hugs) played at 30+ festivals worldwide. Her second, i want to go to moscow — a dark comedy and Chekhov homage — is currently on the festival circuit. Michelle Bossy (director) is a critically acclaimed award winning Mexican-American theater, television, and film director. Theater Michelle directed includes Smile, The Oxy Complex, There and Back, Every Good Girl Deserves Fun, Sex of the Baby, Un Plugged In, and Sarajevo's Child. Her films include 18, She Grinds Her Own Coffee, The New 35, Friendly Neighborhood Coven, Ladies Lounge, Miracle Baby, Incurable, klutz, Chance of Showers, Antisemite, and The Trespassed. Under the Lantern Lit Sky and Nobody's Home are Michelle's feature films. Michelle has directed for Disney and produced for Univision. She directed music videos for Yassou and Brooke Josephson. Michelle directed the series There's a Special Place in Hell for Fashion Bloggers and The Broadway Babies Show. Michelle co-created the musical High School Confidential for Primary Stages, where she was the Associate Artistic Director for a decade. She holds the first directing degree from Webster University. Member: Lincoln Center Director's Lab and SDC. A Poem And A Mistake plays from 31 July to 24 August at 12.40 hrs at The Drawing Room, Assembly Rooms on George Street.
Scotsman
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
A poem and mistake Freaky Friday meets the classics at Edinburgh Fringe
A desk, a chair, a microphone and one female body. US playwright Cheri Magid is set to take audiences at The Edinburgh Fringe on a magical rollercoaster ride of transformation gender, sexuality, and desire, with the UK premiere of her critically-acclaimed play, A Poem and a Mistake. Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Directed by respected Mexican-American theatre, television, and film director Michelle Bossy and performed by award-winning actor Sarah Baskin, A Poem and a Mistake blasts into the Scottish capital this Summer for a run at The Assembly Rooms from July 31 to August 24. This whiplash black comedy tells the story of Myrrha, an eager grad student, as she challenges her professor about the fifty sexual assaults in Ovid's Metamorphoses. When he profoundly misunderstands her, their physical altercation suddenly transforms him into a version of Myrrha and plunges him into the stories themselves. Immersed in an Ovidian landscape, the two face a magical and terrifying confrontation with their own gender, sexuality, and desire. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Sarah Baskin dynamically morphs into gods, goddesses, boyfriends, girlfriends, tricksters and fiends, transporting the audience from a classroom to the mythic realm and everywhere in between. Freaky Friday meets the classics in this whiplash black comedy that cuts to the duality in all of us: aggressor and victim, teacher and student, god and mortal. Sarah Baskin in A Poem And A Mistake Writer Cheri Magid says: 'It's head-spinning to think that the second most adapted book in Western literature has all these assaults in it that have been translated out and made consensual. It's enough to make you swear off romcoms altogether. But Sarah and I both felt that the best way to upend patriarchal story tropes was with pratfalls, Bugs Bunny-like chase scenes and karaoke. And the audience reactions so far have shown us that they are there to laugh as much as to think and feel.' Cheri Magid (writer) writes for theatre, television, film and opera. Her plays have been seen in New York at Primary Stages, New Georges, The New Group, The Women's Project and Rattlestick, regionally in the US at South Coast Rep, People's Light and Theatre Company, The Road Theatre Company and Cincinnati Playhouse among others, and internationally at Austrailan Center for Contemporary Art in Melbourne and the Museum of Asian Art in Corfu, Greece. She also wrote on the Emmy award-winning children's show Arthur and is an Associate Arts Professor of Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch. Sarah Baskin is an award-winning actor and filmmaker from Montreal, now based in NYC. Recent screen work includes A Family Affair (Netflix, opp. Zac Efron), Ramy, Gossip Girl (HBO), The Equalizer (opp. Queen Latifah), and indie films screened at Sundance, Cannes, TIFF, Telluride, and NYFF. On stage, she's worked with Roundabout, 59E59, Urban Stages, American Repertory Theatre, and more. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad She thrives in new play development, with favorite collaborations including Joan Tewkesbury (Retrospective), Hannah Rittner (The Unbelievers, Three Women Mourn the Apocalypse), and Cheri Magid, with whom she co-created A Poem and a Mistake.. As a director, her debut short Les Câlins Cheaps (Cheap Hugs) played at 30+ festivals worldwide. Her second, i want to go to moscow — a dark comedy and Chekhov homage — is currently on the festival circuit. Michelle Bossy (director) is a critically acclaimed award winning Mexican-American theater, television, and film director. Theater Michelle directed includes Smile, The Oxy Complex, There and Back, Every Good Girl Deserves Fun, Sex of the Baby, Un Plugged In, and Sarajevo's Child. Her films include 18, She Grinds Her Own Coffee, The New 35, Friendly Neighborhood Coven, Ladies Lounge, Miracle Baby, Incurable, klutz, Chance of Showers, Antisemite, and The Trespassed. Under the Lantern Lit Sky and Nobody's Home are Michelle's feature films.
Korea Herald
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
2025 CAA Graduation Season
HANGZHOU, China, June 10, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- As 2025 approaches its most vibrant and life-affirming season, the China Academy of Art (CAA) has already been radiating boundless vitality over the past months. While Black Myth: Wukong Art Exhibition continues to forge its brilliance, CAA now unveils another landmark cultural spectacle for Hangzhou—Metamorphoses: 2025 CAA Graduation Season. This year's graduation season revolves around the theme "Metamorphoses". The concept is rooted in the traditional Chinese notion of the seventy-two pentads. In this philosophy, pentad is change, and change is the Dao; through endless metamorphoses, the primordial core persists. "Metamorphoses" thus stand for infinite possibilities, for capacity, for vision, and above all, for spirit. Metamorphoses: 2025 CAA Graduation Season was officially launched on May 31. This year's edition spans seven major venues across Hangzhou: the Xiangshan, Liangzhu, and Nanshan campuses of CAA; Zhejiang Art Museum; World Tourism Museum; Quan Shanshi Art Center; and a citywide media exhibition zone. A total of 2,971 graduates from 20 academic units, including 1,815 undergraduates, 1,006 postgraduates, and 150 students from the affiliated secondary school, present over 3,000 graduation works for the city. On opening night, a themed performance intertwined with a fashion runway show unfolded beneath the rain, transforming the evening into a flowing, poetic spectacle. President Yu Xuhong of CAA stated, "The 2025 Graduation Exhibition is a concentrated manifestation of CAA's disciplinary development and talent cultivation. It is a grand stage where 2,971 creative young individuals present themselves for society's review, and more importantly, a shared public arena of aesthetic education where the power of creation is collectively felt and understood. Let us together create the art of our era, write a new chapter in global art history, and shape the new landscape of world art." Liu Yihong, Artistic Director of the opening ceremony and Vice Dean of the School of Visual Communication noted that this year's stage design breaks away from conventional audience-facing formats. Instead, it unfolds in a four-sided immersive arena, resonating with the thematic spirit of Metamorphoses. Drawing inspiration from the concept of Metamorphoses, Professors Chen Peng, Wang Shuying, Wu Jie, and Hu Nan from the School of Fashion Design led a collective presentation of 158 graduate fashion collections. In 2009, CAA became the first art academy to present its students' graduation works from all disciplines to the public, in the form of the brand-new "Graduation Exhibition Week". The feast aims to recommend outstanding talents to society and showcase CAA as an "Unwalled Academy" that integrates internal and external resources. In the face of the boundless cosmos and the ever-shifting global landscape, let us, with the spirit of creators, forge the inner core of our lives and unfold our artistic journeys. Let us, through the actions of creators, drive social innovation and ride the tides of our time. The future of art will surely flourish in the interplay of divergence and convergence, giving rise to infinite possibilities. The exhibition will run through June 20.
