Near to the Wild Heart

New Stage Theatre Company, under the direction of Ildiko Nemeth, brings its signature blend of multimedia, inventive choreography, and striking visual design to the first-ever stage adaptation of Near to the Wild Heart, the modernist masterpiece by Clarice Lispector (1920-1977). The Brazilian-Jewish novelist is now the object of a long-overdue surge of worldwide literary popularity. Near to the Wild Heart (1943), her sensational debut novel, is the story of a woman trapped in a passionless marriage. Rather than a conventional plot, it offers us a woman’s inner life that is as clear and lustrous as any in world literature. Nemeth adapts Near to the Wild Heart into a multimedia theater piece that evokes a rich, expansive female interior as it dramatizes the life and passions of the book’s heroine. Her playscript employs verbatim excerpts of Alison Entrekin’s faithful translation to reflect — as much as possible — the novel’s unique voice and literary effect.