November
12, 2004
Milton
Meets Galileo: Salter’s Falling Bodies to Open November
18
Falling Bodies, a play by acclaimed poet Mary Jo Salter, Emily
Dickinson Senior Lecturer in the Humanities, and directed by
Holger Teschke, visiting professor of theatre arts, will have
its world premiere at Mount Holyoke with performances scheduled
for November 18–21 at 8 pm in the Studio Theatre at Kendall
Sports and Dance Complex.
According to Salter, the idea for the play came from a footnote
in Dava Sobel’s Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical
Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. Sobel noted that English
poet John Milton toured Europe in 1638 and visited the blind
astronomer Galileo, who was under house arrest in Arcetri, Italy,
for defending a Copernican view of the universe. Salter was struck
by the irony of their encounter: Milton, who had his eyesight
at the time of the visit, didn’t yet know that, like Galileo,
he would go blind, be imprisoned for his beliefs, and create
his own revolutionary cosmos in his epic Paradise Lost.
Intrigued with what their conversation might have been and the
rich celestial imagery that the visit evoked, Salter started
writing a poem. But the imaginary dialogue she scribed was more
theatre than poetry. “I realized that I needed to write
a play, ” Salter said. She relished the thought of creating
a work—her first play—that explored the themes of
time and space, blindness and seeing, art and science, and the
price of cosmic ambition. “The hardest part was finding
the right tone,” she said. “Despite the serious subject,
I also wanted Falling Bodies to be funny.”
Salter presented her idea for the celestial comedy to Teschke,
who promised to direct it, if she wrote it. With a grant to produce
the play from President Joanne V. Creighton’s Innovation
Fund, Salter began to write. She headed off to Italy to do research
and came back with a completed first draft. Upon reading the
script, Teschke knew immediately that it was a winner—though
not without its challenges. “Falling Bodies is a wonderful
piece, full of scientific and literary wit, but a heaven and
a hell of work for the actors, dancers, and all other artists
involved,” Teschke said. “I taught a course about
collaboration in the arts with Jim Coleman and Joe Smith two
years ago, and I knew immediately that this was a project for
all of us.”
Coleman, professor of dance, is choreographing
the show and Smith, associate professor of art, is designing
the set. Vanessa James, professor and chair of theatre arts,
is the costume designer; Tony Silva is the composer; and Amae
Kurre is the lighting designer. “We
couldn’t stage the play without the support of many people
across campus who have worked very hard to support this experiment,” Teschke
said.
The cast includes many Mount Holyoke students and actors
from the Five Colleges. Jim Scully, a San Francisco-based poet,
plays Milton, while Lawrence Tarning, an actor who knows as much
about the stage as he does about science, plays Galileo. H. M.
Kelly, a computer specialist at the University of Massachusetts,
plays Milton’s nephew. “Casting is 80 percent of
every production,” Teschke said. “We have a very
talented and strong cast—and some very special appearances.”
What’s
next for Falling Bodies? Teschke plans to translate the play
next year and give it to his German publisher. “It’s
a great performance piece,” Teschke said. “I’m
sure that Falling Bodies will find its way on other stages in
this country and abroad.”
The play, which runs approximately
two hours, is free and open to the public. Reservations are suggested.
To make reservations or for more information, call x4292 or x4487,
or email jcleahy@mtholyoke.edu.
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