In the Labyrinth

John Turturro And Italo Calvino: Italian Folktales On The Stage And On Film

Actor John Turturro has acquired the rights to create a filmed version of Italo Calvino's Italian Folktales (perhaps my all time favorite fairy tale collection). Last year, Turturro tested the waters so to speak with a new play "Fiable italiano" adapted from Calvino's collection. It was performed before sold out audiences in Turin, Naples and Milan and included layers of languages from English to a variety of Italian dialects. (The play also included one of my favorites stories -- about a donkey that appears to defecate gold and a fool who makes sure it happens). The prospect of a film really, really excites me.

In the meantime, you can read more about the film project here...and watch this short animated film of Calvino's  "The False Grandmother" (illustrated by Kevin Ruelle), a really creepy and scary variant of "Little Red Riding Hood" read by Turturro.

 

And if you are hungry for a little more Calvino, check out this recording of British author Jeanette Winterson reading Calvino's "The Night" online at the Guardian. (Via Open Culture)

Beating Back the Snow and Sleet With Hollywood Icons and Local Demons

I've been up in Milwaukee recently and despite the fact that it was spring, it snowed, sleeted, hailed, and rained the entire time we were there. Happily, I got a chance to escape the madness of the cold weather in the surreal, visual madness of Ghanaian painter Mark Anthony, whose larger than life posters of scenes from popular local tales can raise the hair on the back of your neck. The paintings are not just illustrations though, but a vital part of Ghanaian "concert parties," produced by itinerant troupes of musicians and actors (whose names are advertised on the signs amidst the terrifying spectacles). Traveling to different towns, concert parties bring day long (and night long) entertainments in the form of vaudeville acts, comedy sketches, morality dramas, music, slapstick and improvised performances.

The paintings are done on two pieces of wood and hinged so they may be folded up, stowed in the back of a pickup truck, and carted to the next town, where they serve as advertisements along the side of the road and backdrops to the night's festivities. Mark Anthony, rather than attend formal art school, learned the skill of scene painting from his father and today, is widely acclaimed in Ghana for his work.

The exhibit "Hollywood Icons and Local Demons" is currently up at The Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee and you can see an excellent slide show of Mark Anthony's work online. Though really, really nothing prepares one for walking into the gallery to stand in front of these really huge (8 ft. square) paintings.  Here is a bit of information about the art from the exhibit:

"The images defy any simplistic opposition between "tradition" and "modernity"; they give insight into the local reworking of transnational media. There are mythic dwarves and forest giants as well as images from Hindu religious pamphlets, charismatic Christianity, boy-meets-girl Indian films, B-grade Japanese and Hollywood movies -- from Godzilla to Transylvanian vampires and Jurrasic Park animals. The artist appropriates the forms and reworks them to suit his own purposes. The perspectives are multiple and point to overlapping and provocative issues: local and global, secular and religious. The viewer experiences the images in a fragmented way through the shifting connections between the supernatural, the fantastic, and the realities of daily life."

I came across a couple wonderful websites with additional information that I highly recommend: Bapmaf/John Collins Music Blog (with historical background to the origins of Concert parties and the music -- really excellent) and  Osibisaba (a great review of the show, terrific links to articles and music online and reading suggestions in the comments).

When Shipwrecks Meet Commedia Actors

"Se non é vero, É ben trovato" **

 

This is one of those stories from real life that is so much better than fiction -- having said that, however, I suspect that a version of it will find its way into the new Zizola novel. My friend the artist João Lemos sent me this story along with the photos:

 

"In the winter of 2005, a huge cargo ship named CP Valour collided with the submerged volcanic outcroppings by the shores of Faial island, in the Azores. Traveling from Canada to Spain, it became stuck and some of the hundreds of containers it carried started falling into the sea. Days later, some locals started seeing pieces of clothing being pushed to the sand by the relentless waves. But they weren't typical clothes, Midori. They were all costumes of Comedia Dell'Arte. You see, one of the destroyed containers belonged to the Piccolo theater company that had finished an Harlequin tour through the United States. The amazing part? The people who found the remaining clothes were amateur actors from a local group and it didn't take long for them to enact an Harlequin play dressed in them."

  

**An Italian proverb: "It may not be true, but it's a good story!"