All the ornamentation, elaboration, extremity, and indulgence of both Baroque and Rococo—from life and from art—go on display at Baltimore Theatre Project in Happenstance Theater's hilarious-yet-heartbreaking Barococo, from October 29th through November 14th.
The piece uses all the company's established tools of physical comedy, pantomime, music, and other theatrical stagecraft to bring to life the excesses of an overprivileged elite (and some unfortunate others) who found themselves swept up in the violent retributions of the French Revolution and paying the ultimate price for their oblivious entitlement.
Locked up and facing the guillotine, the imprisoned artisocrats and their cellmates wrote letters to loved ones to offer their final farewells; some of those letters never made it, but were discovered and published centuries later—becoming the catalyst for Happenstance's creative imagination and the source for Barococo.
Sabrina Mandell from Happenstance joined me to share some ruminations on the style and content of the piece. There's more information online at BAROCOCO – Theater Project and BAROCOCO | happenstancetheater
