November
19, 2004
Milton
Visits Galileo: Salter’s Falling Bodies Runs Nov. 18–21
 Photo
by: Fred LeBlanc
(Left to right) Actors Jennifer Udden ’08, Kristen
Voyvodich ’08, Marisa Bannish ’05, Andrea Doeringer ’07,
and Hannah Montgomery ’08 rehearse the opening scene of Falling
Bodies, the battle of the angels. |
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, is having 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 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
counter is
1,592
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