THE KENTUCKY CYCLE Opens at BPA to Rave Reviews, 3/14-30

BPA's preview performances of The Kentucky Cycle were met with rave reviews. Arthur Mortell entreats his Bainbridge Island and Seattle friends to "please see this wonderful, exciting, beautifully directed and staged play. Dinah and I saw PART I last night and we are SO excited about seeing PART II. The Acting! We get to have this level of talent here on our little island! Buy your tickets now and be ready for a real 'happening'."

Kim Scott-Olson said she was very moved by BPA's Kentucky Cycle. "I was left with a great love and sadness for our country, our ancestors who loved and lost their loves, their land; and a sense of such gratitude and admiration for those in this world who have taken the stories of their elders seriously...taken the time to pass them on or write them down. Our heritage...for each and every one of us...is such a beautiful thing."

Winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. This sweeping epic of three families in eastern Kentucky spans 200 years of American history from 1775 to 1975. Fast-paced and finely drawn, Schenkkan's stunning cycle examines the myths of the American past that have created, for better or for worse, the country we are today using nine individual stories to trace the last 200 years through the saga of the Rowens, a fictional clan that scrapes and schemes to keep its hold on land it originally acquired by duping Cherokee Indians out of the their hunting ground. The cycle is epic in style when the plays are performed together, yet each individual play tells a powerful story on its own.

History is more than a static recitation of facts. By telling a story that covers 200 years, playwright Robert Schenkkan allows the audience to clearly see how facts become lost in the telling of our individual and collective histories. The Kentucky Cycle invokes such themes as violence and its role in shaping American History, "The American Dream, the reframing of American History into positive myth, personal integrity vs. greed, and the myth of the "unlimited" American Frontier. The Kentucky Cycle reveals how powerful myths are created from folk tales. Folk tales, which themselves do not rest on fact, but more on the identity of the story teller, and his or her agenda, fears, and character. These myths are more than romantic stories told around the campfire. They profoundly influence the present and shape our future.

The Kentucky Cycle is the first play in the 76-year history of the Pulitzer Prize to win without first staging a New York production.

BPA will be presenting The Kentucky Cycle from March 14 to 30. CIick here for more information.

Photo Credit: Kim Scott-Olson

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