Posts Mentioning RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• 

  Andrew 3:37 pm on February 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  Captain’s Log: Making Berth 

  In Gericault’s studio? On the Raft? In the hull of the Medusa? In a Bar in Senegal?

  Nope.

  “The annals of the marine record no example of a naval disaster so terrible as that of the Medusa frigate…” That’s where we start; the pinnacle of naval incompetence.

  Over a year ago, when I had the privilege of being included in the workshop that helped shape the script we currently are rehearsing, this line, and many more like it, was a constant starting point of educated and artistic debates. Who is speaking? Why are they important? Is there enough context? Who is telling the truth? Who is not? Too much history? Not enough? It became more apparent that this wasn’t just the story of a shipwreck; this was story about questions and whether we were responsible to answer those questions…and yes…it is also about a shipwreck. In some respects, this play is another filter in a long line of artistic impressions (Gericault’s painting, Moncrieff’s play, The Pogues album cover) through which to view the source material, and leaving with a thirst for the truth of the event is a fantastic goal, if not a daunting one. Jack (our director) has even used the metaphor of filters to help us understand a world of shifting time and place and memory. As a cast, we’ve had no shortage of questions and I’m certain that we’ll have plenty more, but what is exciting is the sense that every time something is asked, we all learn a little more about what we are trying to accomplish and feel a compulsion to ask more. We are in the infancy of this rehearsal process, but even now there is a synergy building with great momentum and though not every question has an answer yet, we’re coming to understand that a simple story of a shipwreck may always have more questions than answers.

   

  Reply Click here to cancel reply.

  Name (required)

  Email (required)

  Web Site

   
• 

  Plagiarist Lindsay 9:18 pm on February 15, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  Dark of Night. 

  

  Light. Light. Everywhere.

  Waiting for the bus at night, I am struck by the lights that are everywhere. Even a place like a florist shop where neon is unlikely…the light is present. The brightness is all around.

  Living in a city, light is a given variable.

  

  We not only know that there will be light, we bend it…we shape it…we color it.

  

  And as I took in the light all around, I thought about times sleeping at my parent’s house in Wisconsin. I thought about the sort of fear that only comes when there is nothing. No Light. No Sound.

  When sleeping in small-town Wisconsin, the light is more sparse, the quiet is more quiet. The silence is deafening.

  I thought of the raft of the Medusa. and I thought about the darkness. And I thought about the quiet. And it was terrifying.

  For urbanites, light is as much an element of one’s surroundings as dirt, steel, air and sky. I doubt it’s possible to ever re-create the sort of darkness felt night after night on the fated raft, and the mere passing thought of such complete and utter darkness scares me–it’s the only kind of fear that comes with the presence of NOTHING.

  

   
• 

  Plagiarist Lindsay 10:38 am on February 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  Size DOES Matter. 

   

  

   

  Look at this image of The Raft of the Medusa as it hangs in the Louvre.  As someone who has never been to the Louvre, I have only beheld the horrific detail of Géricault’s painting from a computer screen. It is startling to see the painting in scale with human viewers because soon comes a realization that this painting is huge and inescapable.  If the image were painted onto a greeting card, one would still have trouble escaping the horror displayed but by painting the image larger than life, it’s hard to ignore–it stands as a heinous depiction meant to consume the viewer in size and subject matter.  I wonder how many images lose some of what the artist intended because so many people do base knowledge of art on images displayed on their computer screens. We all have a working knowledge of some visual art, but scale is something that becomes irrelevant when computers (and google) is involved. How can the screen expand a thousand times in an effort to communicate the scale-element of each work?

  The louvre ends the description of the painting with this sentiment:

  The only hero in this poignant story is humanity, and that is what still moves us today.

  This description acknowledges absence of a hero and when one looks at this giant, grotesque painting, the absence is startling. 

  The only hero in this poignant story is humanity.

   
• 

  Ian 12:30 pm on February 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  The Wreck of the Medusa Begins 

  

  Portrait of a Young Man in an Artists Studio

  Jamar was a young painter who assisted Gericault durring the work on Medusa in 1818-1819 and lived in his studio at the time. The picture seems to have been known to Gericult’s friend Ary Scheffer who adapted for one of the figures in his painting of  The Death of Gericault (1824, Louvre). The signature “T. Gericault” appears on one of the rungs of the chair.