I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.
THROUGH THE LEAVES
by Franz Xafer Kroetz
Directed by Brittney Brady
Behind the door of a small butcher shop, Through the Leaves scrutinizes the deep inner lives of Martha and Otto. Martha is an independent woman, a butcher, and a small-business owner. Fueled by a sexual attraction that borders on violence, Otto and Martha are locked in a battle balancing independence and partnership. Raw, ruthless, and reaching for beauty, Through the Leaves is an unflinching interrogation of brutality and loneliness.
From my notebook, November 2018:
Through the Leaves is a fable of brutality and loneliness.
At the beginning of Roger Downey’s translation of our play, he includes a Bavarian proverb: Wer durchs Laub geht, muss das Rauschen dulden. We are compelled to translate it this way: He who walks through the leaves, must bear the rustling. It also reminds us of another German proverb that resonates with the play: Wo gehobelt wird, fallen Spähne or where there’s wood planing, wood shavings will fall.. But back to walking through the leaves, it makes us think about pathways and what lies to the side of them. It asks us to consider what it means to go the road alone.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about loneliness and especially what Hannah Arendt said about it: “what prepares men for totalitarian domination is loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal conditions, like old age, has become an every day experience of the ever growing masses of our century.”
And then there is our play—siting square in front of us—this wild and simple and uncomfortable thing that stares at us, demanding we stare back.
Featuring
Juliana Alvarez and Samuel Garnett
Creative & Production Team
Production Stage Manager: Ethan Hollander
Production Manager: Ni Li
Technical Director: Mitchell Leitschuh
Scenic Designer: Songyi Park
Costume Designer: Edurne Fernandez
Lighting Designer: Christine Ferriter
Sound Designer: Bo Li
Scenic Artist: Rashi Jain
Composer: Evan Johnson
Video Designer: Christopher Jungwoo Kim
Director of Photography: Siru Wen
Fight Director: Steve Rankin
Asst. Lighting Designers: Christian Mejia & Euisun Yoon
Asst. Sound Designer: Jacenta Yu
Asst. Costume Designer: Selena Jin
Asst. Video Designer: Kathleen Fox
Assistant Technical Director: Francisco De Leon
Assistant Scenic Artists: Andrew Carey & Kato Lawton
Production Associate: Patrick Smith
Assistant Stage Manager: Gina De Luca
Assistant Production Manager: Jin Li
Assistant Scenic Designer: Tzu Hsiang
General Manager: Rui Xu
Marketing Manager: Sophie Blumberg
Digital Communications Manager: Jared Pixler
Line Producers: Xiaoyue Zhang, Alyse James
Resident Dramaturg: Changting Lu
fragments
One Island
fragments/work in progress
Letters to X
October 15, 2021
Dear X,
I hear your broadcasts. I pick up your signal now and then. I like that song you sing. Or is it a chant? It is very soothing.
I heard you wonder why maps mark forests that are not there. I wonder that too. In the desert where I live, light blue shapes appear on our maps. Like a miracle, those rivers (now yellow) let you walk across, dust waking behind you.
I wonder what bones, what relics, I might find if I were to dig into the rubble of the Santa Clara River. Which gentle creatures, which human animals remain there, curled and stirring among the rocks? When I have asked these questions of the hot wind, all I seem to get is static.
I hope we can dance together very soon.
Love,
December 2, 2021
Dear X,
I listened to part of a conversation on the radio today. They spoke about death and milk and captains, mapping and fucking, and a dog scratching. I was reminded of that line to let the soft animal of my body love what it loves. I don’t remember where it's from, or at least that’s what I tell myself when my mouth goes dry. What is that animal breathing inside me and will it die like everything else? What do you think, X?
Love.
October 11, 2021
Dear X,
I don’t know who you are or anything about you. I can say that I know more about you than I know about myself. It makes me think that maybe I should try to make a map of myself. Too self-indulgent. So, I take a less direct route toward the same end: I go backward in time, to try to map a history of the people who came before me, where they lived and died and gave birth and paid taxes and crossed oceans and married and stole carriages and went to jail and remarried and shot rabbits. It is all just dates and scribblings and hearsay, but I latch onto what stories I can. I excavate and extract the insides of a creature I hope to become.
I wonder if any of this is helpful. . .