Prospect Theater Company is celebrating 10 years of existence with a spectacular theatrical collaboration.  Collage-like in essence, The Dome encompasses three separate story lines, monologues, solos, and inspiration from the very space in which the performance takes life.  

The West End Theatre on Manhattan’s upper west side has worked with Prospect since 2003 and is closely linked to the church residing within the same building.  The Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul has housed various religious communities in need of space.  After gaining landmark status in the 1980′s the interest to develop the theater space grew but questions on how to fund the process became a major concern.  Benevolently enough, Paramount Pictures found the space and wanted to shoot the movie “Keeping The Faith” there which was a solution to the financial situation.  The architecture of the building became a major model for which The Dome was built on.  Cara Reichel, artistic director, expressed that the space is “designed both to allow us to escape ourselves, and to make us aware of our humanity” which coincides with the themes of universe and birth that saturate the performance and cause the audience to contemplate philosophies of the world all around us.  

I was continually impressed by the manor in which the very separate story lines and solo scenes flowed so naturally, as if we the audience were sitting on the outside of earth, looking in.  Was the audience sitting in the perspective of god, empathetically watching lives unfold where time and space all meshed into one or were we just a part of the bigger picture asking the unanswerable along with the characters in which we observed?  All that is certain is that life, whatever it may be, is the heart that continues to beat, beat… beat.

The Dome is playing through March 1st at the West End Theater. Get tickets, period.

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Tags: birth, Cara Reichel, Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul, humanity, Keeping the Faith, Manhattan Landmarks, Paramount Pictures, philosophy, Prospect Theater Company, The Dome, theater, universe, West End Theater

Mention Eat, Pray, Love and everyone nods their head in recognition.  Introspectively, the journey of a woman is told who, after a divorce at age thirty-one, sojourns first to Rome for pleasure, then Mumbai for spirituality, and last to Bali in hopes to acquire a balance of both. The odyssey is honest and interacts with the reader in a meaningful, relating fashion.  I was left inspired with an urgent need to find a guru of my own.

Aside from Elizabeth Gilbert’s spiritually prompting memoir, she has produced a handful of noteworthy pieces. Published in GQ magazine, her 1997 article “The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon” speaks of a dive bar in Manhattan’s East Village where she worked as a bartender.  It is also the basis for the movie Coyote Ugly.  Gilbert’s collection of short stories, under the title Pilgrims, received the Pushcart Prize in 1997, followed by the novel Stern Men, chosen as a “notable book” by The New York Times. 

Two years have past since the Eat, Pray, Love sensation hit the shelves and it continues to stir up attention. Paramount pictures is now on board, casting Julia Roberts to play Elizabeth Gilbert’s role.

Filed in: Literature
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Tags: bali, books, Coyote Ugly, divorce, east village, Eat, Elizabeth Gilbert, GQ, Julia Roberts, Literature, love, memoir, mumbai, notable book, odyssey, Paramount Pictures, Pray, pushcart prize, reading, rome, spiritual, The New York Times