January 16, 2007
Marionette opera on 400 years of E. Village immigrants
 If you're looking for a little avant garde theater, an upcoming ethno-rock puppet opera with found objects may fit that bill.
The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre will produce "Once There was a Village," a counter-culture retelling of 400 years of immigration to the East Village, using a Czech Hussite battle chorale, a Janis Joplin/Leonard Cohen duet and immigrant folk songs.
The story:
The play follows generational cycles of immigration, during which a tenement "village" rises out of the tidal marsh just north of New Amsterdam. Native Americans who find food and refuge in the swamp are displaced -- or worse -- by Dutch settlers, whose farms are swallowed in turn by shipyards, ironworks, tobacco factories, sweatshops and tenements. Newcomers escaping the nightmares of pogroms, famine and war bring their dreams to this slice of the New World, another frontier village that in
its own time is burned and ripped apart by cultural conflict. "Once There was a Village" will play from January 25 through February 11 at La MaMa experimental theater club, located at 74A E. 4th St., map. Tickets are $18.
January 16, 2007 12:16 PM in Downtown, Sightsology
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