Herskovits on THE REALLY BIG ONCE: "This Project is About Conjuring Ghostly Presences"
By: BWW News Desk Mar. 14, 2010
The focus of the new season at Target Margin Theater is an ambitious theatrical event: the world premiere of The Really Big Once, a new play, created by the company, that tells the story of two theatrical giants, Elia Kazan and Tennessee Williams, and how they changed American culture. 'The Really Big Once' explores the Kazan/Williams collaboration (between 1948 and 1953) on one of their most celebrated plays, Camino Real, and is based on meticulous research of (and access to) their notebooks, letters and recollections, with the permission and support of the Kazan and Williams estates. Performances will begin April 15, 2010 for a limited engagement through May 8, 2010 at the The Ontological at St. Marks (131 East 10th Street).
Target Margin's founder and artistic director David Herskovits spoke to the New York Times about the scope of the theater's endeavor. "In a way this whole project is about conjuring ghostly presences," Herskovits said in an interview in his Brooklyn home. "The memories, the spirits, the voices, the letters, the anecdotes, it's as if they're all in the air, hovering around us at every moment. And we're just trying to give them a space for a second to crystallize, live and then dissolve again into the ether. Like ectoplasm."
Target Margin Theatre is also presenting its latest lab 'The Unknown Williams', a collection of unknown and rarely seen works that will offer new insights into one of America's greatest and most prolific playwrights. Herskovits tells the New York Times that the lab is his way of examining whether these works are truly deserving of obscurity. "I think many people would say that the works are minor, they're late failed experiments by a guy who had used up his talent," he said. But Mr. Herskovits sees an artist pushing himself into new territory as American culture opened up with the passing years."
To read the rest of the story in the New York Times, click here.
Target Margin Theater for more than 18 years has been at the forefront of New York's alternative theater scene and has been praised for its bold and sometimes wild interpretations of classic dramas and lesser-known works. Target Margin Theater has presented ambitious re-thinkings of plays by Shakespeare, Chekov, Brecht, Gertrude Stein, and Beaumarchais, among others. The company's production of Mamba's Daughters received an Obie Award and was a sensation of the 1999 Spoleto Festival, and its recent epic production of Goethe's Faust received critical acclaim.
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