What Is Master Works?
Good Question:
According to Mexican poet Octavio Paz, “Translation is an art of analogy, the art of finding correspondences.” Theatre is constantly translating. This project is one more way in which we commit to our goal of exploring cultures (others and our own) through the art of translation.
Master Works is a short play festival that Commedia Beauregard produces in order to work with award-winning playwrights and local up-and-coming directors to create new dramatic works inspired by works of fine art.
How Does It Work?
We select 6 paintings from a famous artist or a local museum’s collection. We assign each painting to a playwright. Once the 6 playwrights are done writing, 6 directors assemble casts and get the plays ready for performance. In the end, 6 new short plays that translate great works of art to the stage are put on for our wonderful audience.
How Did It Start?
Back in 2008, Christopher Kidder-Mostrom (then, Christopher O. Kidder) heard a story on a public radio station about the Museum of Bad Art in Boston, Mass. The idea that there was a museum full of “Art too bad to be ignored” seemed to be something more than just intriguing. So, he ordered a book of their artwork, and upon viewing the works, it was clear that they could inspire great plays. In February of 2009, the first series of Master Works was presented at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Cabaret Theatre in Minneapolis, Minn.
Because it did indeed work out well, Commedia Beauregard continued to do the project with history’s great painters and other local museums. In 2011 we brought the concept to Chicago with a remount/re-envisioning of the Museum of Bad Art Plays.
As it continues on, the Master Works project will continue to work with history’s greatest painters, and local museums as well, to create new art and new works of translation.
How Is This Translation?
Here’s the main idea: a playwright walks into a museum and sees a painting. There may be a placard next to the painting, but if there is, it isn’t in a language that the playwright can read. But, that’s okay. All the writer needs to know is right in front of him/her. There’s something about this painting that inspires a reaction of “Aha! I know what’s going on in this painting!” And so, the playwright sets to work and puts that thought to paper.
That is the first act of translation that we all go through when we go to a museum. The painter put oil on canvas a long time ago, or perhaps recently, but in a different place. It is up to us, the viewer, to find meaning in the piece in front of us. The brush strokes communicate with us and we have a reaction of some sort. We have translated the meaning of the work by processing what is really just some chemicals applied to a canvas into something with intention, with feeling, with meaning.
The second act of translation is between the written word and the performance. Each director takes the piece they are given and works with actors to interpret what the ink on the page means. The words are processed through the actions and the sounds produced by the actors. Again, the meaning is that of another artist being translated or filtered through another group of artists.
Finally, a third act of translation occurs when the audience sees the performance and adds both receives the meaning of the piece from the performers, but also adds in their own meaning from their own emotions, thoughts, and experiences.