About This Show

Motel is the puppet play of Jean-Claude van Itallie’s America Hurrah trilogy. The giant puppets who rampaged in a tacky midwestern motel room of this play predated the Who’s smashing the guitars and encapsulated the emerging soul of an era. George Ferencz will stage the masterpiece based on the original direction of Michael Kahn. Puppets will be re-created by Jane Catherine Shaw.

Hoplite Diary, directed by Tom Lee, is a large-scale work that incorporates shadow puppetry, video animation, bunraku style puppets and mechanical wooden stage machinery. Original music for the piece has been created by Jurij Fedynskyj and Ilya Temkin, two extraordinary musicians working with the Ukranian bandura and the Russian gusli – instruments used in Eastern European epic story telling. The text has been translated and adapted from the original “Illiad” by John Lee, a Greek scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Lee has designed and constructed almost all of the objects and puppets used in the project, relying on paper, wood and japanese carpentry techniques inspired by his years working under Obie-winning Japenese scenic artist Jun Maeda at La MaMa. Lee has also created intricate video animation sequences based on figures from Greek vase paintings.

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Show Details

Dates: Opening Night: October 7, 2004 Final Performance: October 10, 2004