Play offers new take on concept of beauty

Lights please. Projector.
Slide one: Hanging, broken sheets of clouds fill the stage.
Slide two: A large pit of potting soil is extended out into the first ten rows of the audience in Tohill Auditorium.
Slide three: Actors, clad only in thongs roll around in the dark soil.
It can only be a Paule Turner production.
Turner thinks that art should invoke reaction. He thinks that good artists can’t let fears of the audience affect art. He thinks that artists should take risks.
Turner, the director and choreographer, adheres to all of these mantras in the upcoming production of Mary Zimmerman’s play “Metamorphoses.”
The play, which was just published in 2001 and just left Broadway, follows along the visual lines as many of Turner’s other pieces, including “Medea.”
The play, which will run April 16, 17, 22, 23 at 8 p.m. and April 18 at 3 p.m., is a fourth generation translation according to Turner.
“We are basing our production on the play that Mary Zimmerman wrote which is based on the translation by David Slavitt of a Greek epic by the ancient Roman poet Ovid,” said Turner.
According to Turner, Zimmerman’s adaptation pares down Slavitt’s translation to the barest bones, leaving generous space for the director and performers to create images that amplify the text, lend poetic resonance and even to sometimes contradict obvious literary limitations.
The play, which is intended for adult audiences only, uses the sensuality of the human form to tell selected stories from the Ovid text. The play really tells the story of how things came to be. Although a pool of water was used in the original 2001 Broadway production, Turner chose the pit of soil as the birth place of humanity for Rowan’s version.
Turner said that this play is a pure example how the ancient Greeks lived before the time of shame and guilt. He said that this pre-Bible production touches on the seven sins without judgement.
In the director’s notes, Turner said that, “Critic Northrop Frye dubbed this protean scripture as ‘the poet’s bible,’ because it sets imaginative change as its first commandment abd thereby metls down the ice of inscription which is the usually freezing force of written text.”
It shows that human nature is to be this way and that no one is perfect. The use of 10 actors of varied ability and size perpetuates the theme of being free to show off the body. The opening lines really show off this aspect of the production: “Bodies, I have in mind, and how they change to assume new shapes.”
Actors in the production include Lynn Boianelli, Jennifer Browne, Harmony Ingraham, Adam Joseph, Chris Legentil, Joe O’Brien, Nick Meo, Rosaria Mineo, Angela Smith and Joshua Totora.
The production team includes scene designer Bart Healy, costume designer Heidi Barr, lighting designer Robert A. Thorpe, technical director Tom Fusco, stage manager Holly Bruno and assistant stage manager Joanna Leigh Congalton.
“This play is not about parading around beautiful bodies,” Turner said. “There is no good or bad body and that is what we are trying to convey.”
He said that the play is about opening up discussion. It is about being visually stunning and sensual. It is not set in any time period, it is very ambiguous and allows the students participating to take some risks.
“College is the place to experiment in your field,” said Turner. “Because after that you have to go out and make money doing it and there is not as much room for experimenting.”
Turner also said that the play’s adult content warning isn’t for the nudity, but more for the subject matter, which includes incest, rape and other disturbing topics.
Turner’s most powerful message, though, is the ending to his director’s notes: “As a result of working on this piece, I no longer believe in ugliness – life is all relative and beauty is the constant end.”