FEAST IN THE TIMES OF THE PLAGUE: TRUMP, PUTIN, HITLER
Dangerous Thinking Show at Lit Crawl, by The Arts Resistance
Hannah Arendt said that storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. The Arts Resistance tells stories through the means of the arts.
Dangerous Thinking show is based on A Feast in Time of Plague, a short play by Alexander Pushkin.
A banquet table is set in the street of a plague-struck town. Young people party as death carts rattle by. Girls sing sad love songs or dance in a wild frenzy. “The President,” a young man in charge of the feast, sings the Hymn to Plague and drives away a priest with his calls to repent and turn to God.
Feast is almost a literal translation of John Wilson (Scottish writer)’s play The City of the Plague written about Great Plague of London. Pushkin spoke and wrote fluently in several languages and took enormous pride in his African origin. He descended from a child-slave brought to Russia by Peter the Great. The idea of bridging cultures, languages and history through literary translation and poetry is at the core of The Arts Resistance. You can read the play here. The best translation I could find, by Matvei Yankelevich.
The Brown Plague is relevant today–more than ever. Although, Marina Tsvetaeva, a great Russian poet, wrote that Pushkin’s Plague is Evil in general.
In times of Evil, partying or praying will not bring salvation. Songs will. Poetry. Art. This is the main idea of The Arts Resistance.
The street setting, operatic air and blending genres of The Feast were also a perfect vehicle for our show as we were supposed to perform in Clarion Alley, in the street. Philosophers, burlesque and ballet dancers, singers, comedians, poets and punks threw a circus-meets-cabaret show of poetry, prose, music, dance and theater, including Nietzsche’s The Madman, Pushkin’s verses and Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
The Arts Resistance works on zero budget. All participants volunteer their time and talent. Artist Tsunami created the original masks for the AR show, an enormous effort and stunning artwork. Here are some images from the dress rehearsal in Clarion alley.
However, a storm came upon us (first time in three years of a severe drought in California). We ended up in a community room of a homeless shelter and low-income housing project. Although the fluorescent light and hospital walls ambiance do not make, we decided it was quite symbolic for our gypsy cabaret. We were thankful to Litquake and Lit Crawl organizers for finding us a roof. Here are some images by a fabulous award-winning photographer Fima Gelman.
Visit us at www.artsresistance.com. Join us!
*All facts and photos are in public domain and available through Google. Links to the original sources are included.
** Click and hold the clapping hands on the left bottom corner so more Medium users can read it. The longer you hold it, the more claps the article gets and more people will be able to find out this article. Share on the social media: we need independent research.
