Freud And the Sandman
2009
Freud And The Sandmann
Devised and Directed by
Robert
Waterhouse
With Laura Bevilaqua, David
Butterfield, Patrick Cain
and Christian Brandjes as
Sigmund Freud
Design team: Dyan O'Connell,
Franklin LaVoie, Martha Rothkopf
THREE STARS
THE BUFFALO NEWS
Jason Clark, contributing reviewer
"Waterhouse’s ingenious use of puppetry throughout... creates an otherworldly mode of visual expression that jibes marvelously with the spooky, dense atmosphere of the production."
"The liberal puppetry [is] used for grandeur in a way that
bizarrely but succinctly recalls Julie Taymor’s inventive
concoctions
used in The Lion King."
ARTVOICE
Tony Chase
"The New Phoenix has given the play a meticulous rendering which, in addition to Costa’s exquisite puppets, features an impressive original score by Paul Kozlowski which lends a striking formal quality to the production, and enables Waterhouse, through use of dance and formalized movement, to keep the action propelling forward through its extreme plot twists."
Based on a Tale by E.T.A.
Hoffmann and an original version
by Sigmund Freud, featuring
puppets by Michele Costa and
music by Paul Kozlowski, FREUD AND THE SANDMAN is a new and uncanny entertainment
about the folk-figure who
steals the eyes of naughty children
- and Freud's
attempt
to demystify
the mysterious.
For Curtain Up! 2009, Artistic Director Robert Waterhouse directs FREUD AND THE SANDMAN, which is billed as “a new and uncanny entertainment, with puppets by Michele Costa and an original score by Paul Kozlowski, based on a Tale by E.T.A Hoffmann and an original version by Sigmund Freud.” Winner of two New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist awards (for Waterhouse and Kozlowski), the play is based on Hoffmann's enigmatic story, THE SANDMAN (published in 1816 in Die Nachtstücke, or The Night Pieces), about a student who believes himself persecuted by a childhood folk tale figure (the sandman who steals the eyes of naughty children), and on an attempt by Freud to account for the tale “scientifically”.
German writer, composer, caricaturist, and painter E.T.A. Hoffmann changed his third name, Wilhelm, to Amadeus in 1813 in homage to the great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). Hoffmann's early aspirations were towards music and painting - he left behind a symphony, nine operas, and two masses. Other compositions include vocal, chamber and orchestral works. In middle life he became interested in writing. According to many, his best work was the product of his last ten years, before his early death following an illness. Hoffmann's fiction is considered the first flowering of the horror and fantasy short story. His work especially troubled Sigmund Freud, who wrote -- and then forgot about -- an obsessive attempt to "account" for Hoffmann's stories in 1919: "The Uncanny," an enigmatic attempt to exorcize the ghost of Hoffmann that remains haunted by both THE SANDMAN and other specters of Freud's life.
The production uses the puppets of Michele Costa, of theatreFigüren, and the award-winning music of Kozlowski, of Casperous Vine, to enter the realm of the Uncanny. Featuring Laura Bevilacqua, Martha Rothkopf, David Butterfield, and Patrick Cain, with Christian Brandjes as Sigmund Freud,
Photos by Suzanne Taylor
Poster artwork: Girgio de Chirico, The Seer, 1914/15.
Museum of Modern Art