Bad Luck, Baudelaire in a Box Episode 4
In the latest installment of Baudelaire in a Box, Theater Oobleck travels to join forces with some of North Carolina’s most vibrant musicians: New Town Drunks, Curtis Eller, Dexter Romweber, and JKutchma. We will present twelve new cantastoria adapted from Charles Baudelaire’s epic book of poetry, Les Fleurs du Mal. For this Episode, the poems — which will be translated and set to music — are: The Albatross, The Grateful Dead, The Broken Bell, Past Life, Reversibility, Bad Luck, The Vampire, The Balcony, Always the Same, Gambling, and The Two Good Sisters.
Baudelaire in a Box is a serial cantastoria project based on Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, created by founding Oobleck member Dave Buchen. Over the course of 7 years (culminating in 2017, the sesquicentennial of Baudelaire’s death), the project will adapt each poem from Les Fleurs du Mal as a unique cantastoria, featuring “crankies” (scrolling images) designed and illustrated by Dave Buchen, paired with a musical adaptation. After North Carolina, we return to NYC for Banners and Cranks “Singing Pictures Cabaret” and then in the Fall back to Chicago with Michael Zerang, Bobby Conn, Chris Schoen, and Jeff Dorchen.
It is a project so ambitious, so immense, that it cannot be contained on a single web page. And so:
Dave is blogging about the process here, at the Baudelaire in a Box Blog.
A video explanation of the cantastoria art form is presented by our colleague Clare Dolan here.
And learn more about Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal here.
Photography by Kristin Basta. Design by Dave Buchen & David Isaacson.
North Carolina welcomes Baudelaire
posted 05/28/2012
We got great press for Baudelaire in a Box, Episode 4: Bad Luck, which premiered in North Carolina. Here’s links to the previews, with some choice quotes:
From INDYWEEK.COM
“You get handed a whole book of poems, of beautiful poetry about bars and opium and prostitutes and all the sins and beauties of life,” says Roberto Confresi of the New Town Drunks about adapting Baudelaire’s odes. “Each one is more incredible than the last.”
From The Herald Sun
“The illustration is all in my little world. The music is in their world, and they all meet.”
"Baudelaire" one of Top 5 to see in Chicago Reader Fall Preview
posted 09/16/2011
The Chicago Reader has listed Our top five theater picks for fall, including Baudelaire in A Box, Episode 3: Death and Other Excitements.
Tony Adler reports:
Buchen and Schoen plan to have all 126 poems boxed and ready by 2017, the sesquicentennial anniversary of Baudelaire’s death. You can gauge their progress this fall when they present cantastoria performances of the six poems that make up the “Death” section of Les Fleurs plus the magnificent “Anywhere Out of This World.”
Full article from the Reader
Oobleck in Puerto Rico
posted 01/18/2011
Theater Oobleck is engaged in our most ambitious project to date: Baudelaire in a Box, a cantastoria of the entire contents of “Les Fleurs du mal,” to be completed by 2017, the 150th anniversary of Baudelaire’s death.
The first installment was performed at the HideOut in April. The next installment will be performed January 26-30 in Puerto Rico, as part of The Festival Vititiri. And the third installment will be back here in Chicago and at the Banners and Cranks festival in New York City this summer
Here’s the skinny on this weekend: The Festival Vitititiri presents four different nights of puppets, circus, music, cantastoria and wine.
Wednesday January 26th at 8:00, at the Nuyorican Cafe in Old San Juan. Theater Oobleck, Clare Dolan, The Dolly Wagglers, Circo Nacional de Puerto Rico, Y No Había Luz, María de Azúa and Eden Cruz perform.
Friday and Saturday January 28 & 29th, the festival travels to south west coast in Guanica at La Bodega Andreu Solé with Theater Oobleck, Clare Dolan, The Dolly Wagglers, Circo Nacional de Puerto Rico and Y No Había Luz.
And Sunday afternoon at 5 they are back in San Juan at the Abracadabra Café in Santutrce with Theater Oobleck, Clare Dolan, The Dolly Wagglers and Eden Cruz.
Theater Oobleck will be performing three new cantastorias from the Baudelaire in a Box project. Chris Schoen will sing his adaptations in English and Eden Cruz will sing his in Spanish of The Giantess, The Sick Muse and Hymn to Beauty with scrolling artwork by Dave Buchen.
(And what is a cantastoria, you might ask? Cantastoria is the Italian word for a performance form originating in 6th Century India involving the display of representational paintings accompanied by sung narration. It traveled the world and has taken on many forms, from Indian religious Par scrolls to the Indonesian Wayang-Beber, to Persian Parda-dar entertainers, to itinerant European street performers selling broadsides, to the German banklesanger in Weimar cabarets to the present day revival.)
The Wine Cycle, Baudelaire in a Box Episode 1
posted 04/15/2010
Theater Oobleck is heading to the Hideout for “The Wine Cycle,” an evening of music+image with Dave Buchen and Chris Schoen. They will be scrolling and singing through the works of Baudelaire, Moses, Pliny the Elder, and more.
It’s one night only, Monday, April 26th, 9pm
at The Hideout, 1354 West Wabansia. map
$5 cover, free if you’re broke, more if you’ve got it. Tickets at door only.
The evening is presented in conjunction with the Banners & Cranks Festival of Cantastoria at Links Hall (performances April 23-May 9th) and Packer Schopf Gallery (April 16th-May 8th).
