EXPLOSIONS

 

was created by Virlana Tkacz & Wanda Phipps

directed by Virlana Tkacz

music by Roman Hurko

set & lights by Watoku Ueno

costumes by Carol Ann Pelletier and Yuko Yamamura

projections by Rebecca Baron, sound by Eugene Kuziw

asst director: Margaret Lanzoni, stage manager: Tina Magnuson

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with Richarda Abrams,Candace Dian Leverett, Jessica Hecht, Ralph B. Pena, Jeffrey Ricketts, Sean Runnette, Dawn Saito, Olga Shuhan, Jeff Sugarman

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EXPLOSIONS at La Mama ETC in New York January 3-19, 1992

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The dramatic scenes in EXPLOSIONS are adapted from "GAS 1" by Georg Kaiser, a 1919 German Expressionist drama set in the future. EXPLOSIONS interweaves documentary material on the Chornobyl nuclear accident with the Kaiser play, as well as contemporary American and Ukrainian poetry. Natalka Bilotserkivets's poem "May," written shortly after the

Chornobyl accident, provides the text for the Sleeper scenes throughout the piece. Other poems such as "Prypiat: A Still Life" by Oksana Zabuzhko were adpted to form lyrics for the songs. 

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Agni Reveiw, which published Natalka Bilotserkivets' "May" in its fall 1991 issue, awarded the Agni Translation Prize to Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps in 1992.

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READ more poetry by Oksana Zabuzhko in our translations