Press Release
Fools Mass begins a week-long mixed-venue run on Saturday, April 11th at midnight at the Cell Theatre, 338 West 23rd Street. No reservations are necessary for this performance. $15 suggested donation at the door. Information: (718) 638-6037 or dzieci@dziecitheatre.org.
Dzieci returns to La MaMa E.T.C. from Thursday, April 16 through Saturday, April 18 at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, April 19 at 2:30 pm. Tickets for La MaMa E.T.C., 74A East 4th Street, in the first floor theatre, are $18. Information: (212) 475-7110 or www.lamama.org. The Sunday matinee will be followed by a discussion with noted scholars on Dzieci, Grotowski, and 'Art as Vehicle'
As this season marks the 10th anniversary of Fools Mass, so it also marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Jerzy Grotowski, the father of Dzieci’s theatrical lineage. ("Dzieci" is the Polish word for "children.") It is no accident that the mythic priest of this seminal work is named Father Jerzy. The piece is both a tribute to Grotowski, a mentor for company director Matt Mitler, and a memorial. Of the work, nytheatre.com wrote: "The lovely singing voices help give a quality of holiness that lets this performance really ring of simple souls reaching for the divine. Those with open minds and a spiritual bent will find a great deal of beauty."
Fools Mass is set during the Plague years of the 16th century. A group of village idiots are forced to enact their own Mass due to the sudden death of their beloved pastor, an extraordinary man who had given them shelter and trained them to sing. Despite this solemn premise, the piece is full of buffoonery and comic audience participation. This along with choral singing of sacred hymns and chants from the 8th through the 17th centuries, combine to create a work which travels from the ridiculous to the sublime.
"The performers wear the vestments, not of priests but of medieval bedlam idiots who are called upon by circumstance to celebrate a Mass even though they do not know how. Moving easily between the sublime and the ridiculous, drawing its audience through laughter toward participation and contemplation, the work resists being categorized as either theater or religion, becoming both at once in an event experienced by many as transformative." (The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2005)
Fools Mass was first performed at Grace Church in 1998, and subsequently in venues ranging from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to the 2004 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona, where Dzieci was the only theatre group invited to present. Founded by Matt Mitler in 1997, Dzieci uses techniques garnered from Grotowski and the Polish Theatre Laboratory; Peter Brook; Humanistic Psychology; and ritual forms derived from Native American and Eastern spiritual disciplines in its search for the "sacred" through the medium of theatre. They are the New Brunswick Theological Seminary 2008-2009 Helen Studdiford Kleis Visiting Artist, and was Artist-in-Residence at St. John the Divine in 2003.
