Chopin "Awakening" adaptation ahead of its time
Categories: Theater
 |
"The Awakening basically ended (Kate) Chopin's career," says Laura Leffler McCabe of Savage Umbrella Theater. "The critics slammed it. They hated it. They praised her style, but the subject was too much ahead of its time. It was sort of a lost book until the 1960s."
Savage Umbrella is teaming with 3AM Productions for a stage adaptation of Chopin's 1899 novel, which depicted a woman agonizing against the strains and conventions of marriage and motherhood. In its day, the subject matter was simply too hot to touch. "The book is beautiful," Leffler-McCabe says when asked why she decided to take on the project as writer and director. "It's this proto-modernist text full of slice-of-life details and conversations, along with these really lyrical expressive passages of a character in turmoil."
The show, which boasts a cast of more than a dozen, was company-created, and incorporates music and movement to do justice to a story that begins in a woman's heart, then radiates with seismic repercussions into the world around her.
"We started workshopping with the cast back in September," says Leffler-McCabe. "We cussed a lot, fought some, danced, experimented, and honed in on something that gets to the heart of what Chopin was trying to do."
More than a century later, Chopin's fictional wife and mother would certainly have options other than the bleak course she finally took. But it remains a relevant work, ripe for reinterpretation. Times may change, but our essential restlessness does not.
The Awakening plays April 2-17 at the Gremlin Theatre, 2400 University Avenue, St. Paul. For tickets call 612.339.0207.
Email to Friend
Write to Editor
Print Article
