Faces of Mary

The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, Israel is a beautiful church – regardless of the fortitude or flavor of your faith.  The spot is serene; an atmosphere that could stem from the fact that Mary seems to be rather uncontroversially loved by all.  (A nice goal, I suppose.) The church was built on top of what is considered the original home of Joseph and Mary, and excavated areas show the original village of Nazareth, including the room in which Mary was visited by the Archangel Gabriel.  It’s gone through rounds of rebuilds – originally established in Byzantine times, overseen (into disrepair) by Muslims, reconstructed by Crusaders, and again by the Franciscans.  The church today was built in the late 60s and is currently one of the largest in the Middle East.

But I am neither a history nor religion buff (really, ask anyone), so these details only half interest me.  Where I spent most of my time in the Basilica of the Annunciation was the upper part of the church and in the courtyard.  Here you can find paintings and mosaics dedicated from all around the world that depict Mary and the nationalism of the donating country.   Guess what?  Mary is not always an elegant white woman.

The American work is – can you guess – rather large and predominantly placed in the upper part of the church.  And Spain, for whatever reason, has three mosaics in the courtyard:

la foto 2

la foto 1

la foto 3

Nazareth is considered the Arab capital of Israel – of the 65k population, roughly 40k are Muslim.  So, the hometown of Mary – and the spot where Jesus may have played street games with childhood friends – is not without religious tension.  For example, this billboard in the center of the city:

Nueva imagen

The Play's the Thing

I don’t go to many plays.  I’ve mentioned my wish that this weren’t so, along with my concern that it is a dying art form, particularly in my fair city.  That was a tad sensationalist.  So, it was with great anticipation that I went to see Company One’s Boston theater premier of Haruki Murakami’s short story collection After the Quake – as adapted by Frank Galati. Prior to this week, I’d only ever read The Wind Up Bird Chronicle – a strange, strange book that mixes mystery, relationships, WWII, mysticism … you name it.  It meanders around a storyline (or a dozen storylines) and you lose your place and then can’t seem to forget it.

So, a play adaptation of Murakami – with his constant interweaving of reality and its counterparts – sounded interesting.  BCA Plaza Theatre is a nice little place in the South End with about 140 seats.  (Right next door you can get really delicious fries and drinks at the Beehive.)  The play mixed two stories from the After the Quake collection: “Honey Pie” and “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo.”  One a little more grounded in reality than the other, so I thought they were a good combination.

Murakami wrote this collection of short stories after the earthquake that hit Kobe, Japan in 1995.  The “Kobe Earthquake” was at a 6.9 magnitude and killed approximately 5,500 and injured 36,896 people.  In writing the stories, Murakami set some guidelines: All had to be related to the earthquake but none could take place in Kobe or during the actual event.  They also had to be written in the third person.  Now, this last bit clears up something about the play.  Yes, there was a narrator for both stories, but every once in a while the characters themselves would deliver a self- descriptive monologue in the third person.  It felt odd, but it was Galati sticking within Murakami’s guidelines.

The two musicians on stage throughout the 90 minutes were fantastic.  A violin and a bass clarinet.  Five actors total (including a little girl), switched characters as the play jumped between stories, including the role of narrator.  The set was spare and seemed to catch an appropriate Murakami mood.  The actors were decent, but I was distracted by some of the delivery.

Not the most amazing thing I’ve experienced, but I’m glad I went.  Theater helps you look at a storyline from a different view.  For example, when reading “Honey Pie” I did not pay much attention to the story of the bears and consider what that story within meant to the overall story.  But the play got me thinking…

“I'll have grounds/ More relative than this – the play's the thing/ Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.”

I would recommend this play for lovers of the novelist – or rather, I’d recommend reading the short stories and then going to the play, because it is impossible not to appreciate Murakami.

Sharks in the Trees

Now that the threat of the next frost is far far in the future and all the trees are suddenly covered in green, I want to go back to the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park.  It’s a gem in Lincoln, Massachusetts and now I know why everyone looked at me quizzically when I said I’d never been.  Because it is AMAZING. I went a few weeks ago – a Saturday that was the first unusually hot day of Spring – to be followed, of course, by many cold days.

There is nothing better than a good sculpture garden – or actually, there is nothing like a group of sculptures expertly placed in any environment.  It can be a small enclosed space for all I care – so long as it’s done well.  My favorites include: the backyard of Rodin’s house, the atrium in the Picasso museum in Paris and the Brancusi room in the Philadelphia Museum.

The DeCordova Sculpture Park is 35 acres with about 75 pieces of artwork.

There are even sharks in the trees:

People bring picnic lunches.  Small children run screaming from sculpture to sculpture, hiding from each other and yelling in delight when they come upon the next artwork.  As if they had discovered it for all mankind.  And their screams are not annoying.  That’s the awesome thing.  They are having a good time and it’s contagious.  So often, art spaces make people feel like they need to be serious.  Don’t talk out loud.  Don’t laugh!  But art is playful.  Artists can have a sense of humor – most of them do – and they make jokes in their work.  For the purpose of creating laughter.  Imagine!  Something about a sculpture garden helps you let down your guard as a viewer and just give way to the emotions that the work brings out.  It’s relieving.

There is also a traditional museum with multimedia pieces that are great.  It’s very worthwhile to go inside.

The museum is just minutes away from the Minuteman reserve.  The whole thing makes me want to go live in Lincoln MA.  I don’t need to walk down the street to get my coffee in the morning or a beer in the evening.  I will happily pour my own of both and sit out on my porch.

The Corn Is Green

This weekend I saw the very last showing of The Corn Is Green at Boston’s Huntington Theater. The Huntington is a decent theater and – so I am told – puts out consistent runs for the Boston community. Lately, though, I’d heard that the consistency has been with snoozes… So, when I heard Ed Siegel give the play a good review on WBUR, I made note of it. (Siegel usually makes me feel evil with delight at his harshness.) And then I heard a couple of random folks say that the play was actually good. So I got some tickets and snookered my friend Stefanie into going with me.

The Corn is Green was written in 1938 by Emlyn Williams. It’s about L.C. Moffat, a strong willed woman of some means who arrives in a small Welsh mining town and starts a school. Among the illiterate coal mining children she takes under wing is a young boy who eventually gets a scholarship to Oxford. A movie was made of the story with Bette Davis as Miss Moffat.

So, the play is pretty dated. It is also very similar to My Fair Lady (or should I say Pygmalion?) so you can’t help but feel you are watching something seen before. But, that said, The Corn Is Green takes a few unexpected twists and the ending asks that the audience be as strong as the playwright made her characters.

The Miss Moffat lead was played by Kate Burton and Burton’s son played the illiterate teenager. Kate Burton has won awards for other plays and has been in movies like The First Wives Club and Ice Storm. She is also the daughter of Richard Burton (actor and husband number #5 and #6.) I think it’s safe to say that Kate Burton made the play worthwhile, but the supporting actors were good too. In fact, there wasn’t a weak one among them.

There aren’t too many options for traditional theater in Boston. There’s the A.R.T, which puts on absolutely insane plays – or so I’m told. Avante-garde to the extreme. I like avante-garde, but the looks on people’s faces who have been to these shows makes me wary. The guy who delivers the mail at work is a playwright and since he delivers my boxes of books from Amazon, we talk about what he’s writing and the state of plays and theater in Boston, in the United States, in the world. Art is dying. And no one cares. There’s no cultivation of craft, not enough esteem or patience for this tradition to keep it going. And then he suggests I read something and I make another Amazon purchase and I’m pretty sure the printed and spoken word will keep going.

But I don’t know what runs like The Corn Is Green – no matter how well acted they are – can do for the art form. Because while I enjoyed the play, and I laughed out loud more than a few times, I do not know how much I walked away with. True, there were some surprising choices, and Miss Moffat is a strong character – and she is complex. She is selfish in her selflessness and any work that captures that very human trait is worth our time. So, okay. All right. I recommend it.

But, I saw the last show in Boston, so if you are reading this, you’ll have to find yourself another play to go see. They’re out there.

I was recently at the MOMA. Before entering this building I always ask myself…why bother? Do I really have twenty dollars to spend on a place I’ve already been so many times? And then I find myself in the room with all the Matisse’s and I’m looking at this:

For whatever reason, this painting really gets me. Every single time.

So, my theory is, View of Notre Dame fits into my personal art archetype. We all have these, unique to us and hardwired, taking shape in varying mediums – literature, music, photography, nature, whatever. While one piece of art may seem wildly different from the next, there is a common thread between them (say between a painting and a poem or a song), the reason why we are attracted. It’s a feeling. An emotion. And it’s personal. Of course, there are those works that fit into everyone’s archetype because they are that good, like Michelangelo’s David or Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” But, I’m willing to bet my MOMA price of admission that View of Notre Dame does not evoke the same feeling in the person standing next to me at the T stop as it does me.

I will attempt to explain what happens when I come across something that fits my art archetype – and insinuate that everyone in the world gets the same feeling. I should quit while I’m ahead, but let’s use the painting above as an example.

It’s physical. An actual welling in my chest that seems to release tension throughout the rest of the body. And then an emotion stems from that physical release – and the emotion allows me to fully look at the painting, to internalize, to think – it leads to a thoughtful state. When I look at something like View of Notre Dame (the original, NOT a reproduction), I feel like crying. This is harder to explain but it is the most important thing to explain. The crying comes from joy, from relief. Contentment. As if everything is going to be okay; that there is balance in the world and that there is meaning.

This release reminds me how our well-being and emotional awareness is connected to our bodies. Talk to a massage therapist and they can tell you about people crying on the table. The physical release lets a wall go. Yogis use the physical practice as a door to meditation – not for toned arms or a flat stomach. Our bodies affect our emotional state and our ability to think.

What falls under your archetype? Once you start recognizing them, they are hard to avoid. Personally, my chest constricts whenever I read something by Michael Ondaatje or Jack Gilbert or James Salter or I sit in the Rothko room at the Tate.