Dzieci: Fool's Mass Followup

December 17, 2002

Fool's Mass 2002 was a resounding success! If you were there, thank you for helping us to continue this great tradition. If you missed it, you'll have three chances to catch this transcendent piece of ritual theatre during our run at La MaMa in January. Be on the lookout for upcoming notices.

Here are some of the glowing comments we've received from audience members:

I thought, "this is the music I want to hear when I die". Afterwards, I didn't feel like shopping, and on the subway ride home, I felt like everyone was smiling at me.
--Laussanne

An amazing play. We sing and laugh; we see clearly and up close the boundaries we have created and the distances we have established for too long for our own security. If we allow ourselves to get close to the table and eat the bread the fools offer us, we become unable to say properly who is the mentally ill, who is the poor, who is the outcast, who is right or wrong. They offer everything they have and we feel the shame of our long lasting self-righteous boundaries.
--Claudio Carvalhaes

I was particularly impressed with how well-developed everyone's characterizations were, and how focused you all were throughout. I can see how your work with "maginalized" communities helps you in this type of production. It was touching, funny, sad, and beautiful, to name just a few things I felt after seeing it!
--Tracy Roberts

I was genuinely moved by your performance Tuesday night. You do indeed capture something that's probably inside all of us that feels vulnerable -- and with it, our resilience. Many, many thanks for sharing your gifts -- and, behind the mumming, your considerable skills.
--Christopher Cory

I walked away in idiot stupor having been hugged and kissed in a new immense Church by relentless mad priests of gaiety and notoriety, disability and profound songs of peace and drunken mangers and bibles and people from hills and towns who blew into me and fed me and blessed me, though I'd wandered in by a strange road filled with taxis and mules, poverty and wardrums. A great spirit gift I so needed I'm certain. So direct. So transparent. I disappeared in the beautiful theatre of light. The bread, the wine, the singing, the new friends. Merci enfants Dzieci.
--Christopher Stickney