In the course of my research, I ran across a Polish Theatrical Genius I had never heard of before, not mind you because he is obscure, but because of my own ignorance of 20th century theatre history: Tadeusz Kantor.
Born in 1933, he was active from 1940 to 1990, and was at the same time a Painter, a Sculptor, a Set Designer, and a Theatre Director of tremendous vision and talent. I was so impressed with what I read and saw that I started a new blog that envisions which way to take things further afield than just the Frida Show:
http://theabsurdisttheatrecooperative.blogspot.com
I now want try to reconcile both things, and make Frida an integral part of the new vision that is evolving out of that discovery. Kantor's work was often called "The Theatre of Death", and that fits squarely with my idea of Death being the second main protagonist next to Frida herself, rather than Diego Riveira. I was already planning on making the props (bed, wheelchair, easel, prosthetics, corsets, etc…) an important part of the show, and that also fits very well with the Kantor inspiration. I was seeing the show almost as a non linear vaudeville, a sort of Frida Carnival Show, highly stylized and "overacted", a succession of loosely tied together iconic scenes. That too is akin to the Kantor style of "avant-garde theatre". For Kantor, there are no vulgar props, they are works of Art in their own right, and that fits with my intentions to use my own sculpture as props. Lacking in my preliminary vision of Frida were the Absurdist context, the use of mannequins, and the dadaist wackiness of the scenes and of the props.
I now see puppets playing the part of the child Frida, the tortured Frida(spine stretching, surgery, amputation), and a larger than life Diego Rivera.
In light of the general demise of Communist regimes (for all practical purposes, although keeping the label, both Russia and China have become de facto rabid capitalist states, the Party leaders having transformed into Oligarchs), I see the belief of Frida in the communist Party then as philosophically absurd now.
http://theabsurdisttheatrecooperative.blogspot.com
I now want try to reconcile both things, and make Frida an integral part of the new vision that is evolving out of that discovery. Kantor's work was often called "The Theatre of Death", and that fits squarely with my idea of Death being the second main protagonist next to Frida herself, rather than Diego Riveira. I was already planning on making the props (bed, wheelchair, easel, prosthetics, corsets, etc…) an important part of the show, and that also fits very well with the Kantor inspiration. I was seeing the show almost as a non linear vaudeville, a sort of Frida Carnival Show, highly stylized and "overacted", a succession of loosely tied together iconic scenes. That too is akin to the Kantor style of "avant-garde theatre". For Kantor, there are no vulgar props, they are works of Art in their own right, and that fits with my intentions to use my own sculpture as props. Lacking in my preliminary vision of Frida were the Absurdist context, the use of mannequins, and the dadaist wackiness of the scenes and of the props.
I now see puppets playing the part of the child Frida, the tortured Frida(spine stretching, surgery, amputation), and a larger than life Diego Rivera.
In light of the general demise of Communist regimes (for all practical purposes, although keeping the label, both Russia and China have become de facto rabid capitalist states, the Party leaders having transformed into Oligarchs), I see the belief of Frida in the communist Party then as philosophically absurd now.
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