Sometimes the most chilling moments in art strike me as such because they are set in such a beautiful way; so much care curating the grotesque, so much technique spent capturing the moment...
Read MoreTime perspective fascinates me – particularly in how our perception of Time is affected, or manipulated, by music. That effect is probably due to the way in which we humans measure Time – the distance we are from an event – though that is a source of considerable disagreement among scientists...
Read MoreAs he assembled the libretto for Zealot Canticles, the task before Lansing was enormous. We asked him to focus on the writing of Wole Soyinka, of which there are volumes of great variety. His many plays in English are undoubtedly what led to his Nobel, but it is the very personal poems, canticles, lectures, and essays addressing oppression, political imprisonment, and the effect of zealotry on the individual and the community that is our focus...
Read MoreThis is the first of a number of brief reflections on the work and process of presenting the world premiere of Lansing McLoskey's Zealot Canticles. (Sunday, March 19 in Philadelphia).
In April 2011 I had the idea of a piece based on the writings of Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate (Literature, 1986) whose eloquent writings on his experiences as a political prisoner and, more recently, staring into the face of Boko Haram in his home Nigeria, I found truly moving...
Read MoreWole Soyinka (b. 1934) is a Nigerian poet, playwright, novelist, and recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1967 Soyinka was arrested and imprisoned for ''civil defiance.'' His crimes? Denouncing the suppression of human rights and free speech by the military dictatorship of General Yakubu Gowon, intervening in an attempt to avoid the Nigerian/Biafran civil war, and condemning the genocide of the Igbo people...
Read MoreThe libretto to Zealot Canticles, with numerous texts from Wole Soyinka.
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