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The glass pane almost ripples
Clara Kanter, Alastair White, and David Mazower's The Drowning Shore (2020) is a gorgeous act of ghosts and limits and liminal remembrance, a 14-minute cantata in Scots and Yiddish reaching through water and time to speak of marginalized languages and imperial borders and once again the love between two women that is the heart of Sholem Asch's God of Vengeance, the playwright's great-great-granddaughter now the performer in her bird-of-paradise brilliance, in ancestral tartan, in frum-black silk that made me think, intended or not, of Hanna Rovina's Leye in The Dybbuk, crumbling earth between her fingers, writing holy letters on the air. I managed to watch it this afternoon for its streaming premiere, no less haunted for being digital. I will have to check out the rest of Compass Presents' Oracles in Sepia if they are anything like as good as this one. In the meantime, I commend it highly to your attention.
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B) I don’t have art of that profundity in me (I sat in my work-couch-synagogue and yelled when that ending happened) but it helps renew my belief in the art I can make, or at least the dumb little books I can write about queers in love all over history.
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Good! Every now and then I worry that my pattern recognition has just turned into apophenia. Also that's just cool.
B) I don’t have art of that profundity in me (I sat in my work-couch-synagogue and yelled when that ending happened) but it helps renew my belief in the art I can make, or at least the dumb little books I can write about queers in love all over history.
You know I disagree with the first clause of this sentence, but the second makes me happy, because your art is going to make someone else sit on their couch and yell, but only if you write it.
*hugs*
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I loved the shot of her putting her hands together, especially in the context of the earlier composition with both of her roles in the shot.
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Yes!
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Whaaaaaaaaaa?
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A friend on Facebook alerted me to it, or I'd never have found out in the first place! I'm so glad to have known and to be able to share.
*hugs*
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Okay. This is *Good*, and I will come back and watch it with my full attention.
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I think it will resonate with you.
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Magic is but words and bodies ... lips move in time with the wind
and
The spell is but silence /in the alien language / words that cover the earth with gold, gunships, articles, contract law, and theater
and
Those lungs filled with water and signs/ marking borders
Those last ones: the performer is holding the piece of glass so it just frames her face, and her face looks like one of these Fayum mummy portraits, and it's fitting.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I shared it with the healing angel's SO, whose many interests include choral work, Jewish history, and marginalized people.
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I love the libretto. I told the composer if I had encountered it in a collection of poetry, I'd have bought the collection on the spot, and it's true.
("Magic is but words and bodies" and "gold, gunships, articles, contract-law and theatre" were two of the lines that struck me deeply, too.)
Those last ones: the performer is holding the piece of glass so it just frames her face, and her face looks like one of these Fayum mummy portraits, and it's fitting.
I didn't even think of that: I like it.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I shared it with the healing angel's SO, whose many interests include choral work, Jewish history, and marginalized people.
You're welcome! I have seen so few things like this piece and I love them.