Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) is one of our country's most influential yet overlooked writers. She published fifteen collections of poetry, plays, translations, children's books, and several works of nonfiction. Her "toys of fame" include the Yale Younger Poets Award, the Copernicus Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Shelley Memorial Award. From 1975-1976, she served as president of P.E.N. American Center.
Muriel Rukeyser's Houdini is the most exhilarating, disturbing and
triumphant theatre script I've read since Tony Kushner's Angels in
America. Ahead of time and timeless, like most Rukeyser writings,
it lifts straight off the page into the imagination.--Adrienne
Rich
A deft exploration of how the physical and emotional risks that
people engage over the course of there are essentially spiritual.
As a musical, Houdini explores the ideas of love, physicality, and
sexuality that infuse Rukeyser's oeuvre by using a novel's freedom
of scope and plot while maintaining poetic devotion to music and
language.--Rain Taxi
The dramatic structure of Rukeyser's play is collage-like, with
events of childhood, meetings and separations, voyages abroad, song
and dance, and astonishing feats of escape.Who would have ever
thought that in the time of the legendary past of carnivals and
magic acts, in the beginning of the twentieth century, a rabbi's
son, endowed with strength and beauty held the key to unlocking the
mysteries and the truths behind the daily headlines?--American Book
Review
Muriel Rukeyser's Houdini is the most exhilarating, disturbing and
triumphant theatre script I've read since Tony Kushner's Angels in
America. Ahead of time and timeless, like most Rukeyser writings,
it lifts straight off the page into the imagination.--Adrienne
Rich
One strange and beautiful verse drama, this is a metaphorically
lush and wryly incisive interpretation of the psyche and art of
Harry Houdini. Houdini inspires Rukeyser to ponder our love/hate
relationship with our body, our desire for magic and acceptance of
illusion, the link between exhibitionism and exorcism, and the
eroticism of bondage and the myth of escapism. And then there's his
wife Bess, emblematic, for Rukeyser, of longing and stoicism, who
utters one of the poet's most resounding lines, 'What would happen
if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split
open.--Booklist
Muriel Rukeyser's Houdini is the most exhilarating, disturbing and
triumphant theatre script I've read since Tony Kushner's Angels in
America. Ahead of time and timeless, like most Rukeyser writings,
it lifts straight off the page into the imagination.--Adrienne
Rich
A deft exploration of how the physical and emotional risks that
people engage over the course of there are essentially spiritual.
As a musical, Houdini explores the ideas of love, physicality, and
sexuality that infuse Rukeyser's oeuvre by using a novel's freedom
of scope and plot while maintaining poetic devotion to music and
language.--Rain Taxi
The dramatic structure of Rukeyser's play is collage-like, with
events of childhood, meetings and separations, voyages abroad, song
and dance, and astonishing feats of escape.Who would have ever
thought that in the time of the legendary past of carnivals and
magic acts, in the beginning of the twentieth century, a rabbi's
son, endowed with strength and beauty held the key to unlocking the
mysteries and the truths behind the daily headlines?--American Book
Review
Muriel Rukeyser's Houdini is the most exhilarating, disturbing and
triumphant theatre script I've read since Tony Kushner's Angels in
America. Ahead of time and timeless, like most Rukeyser writings,
it lifts straight off the page into the imagination.--Adrienne
Rich
One strange and beautiful verse drama, this is a metaphorically
lush and wryly incisive interpretation of the psyche and art of
Harry Houdini. Houdini inspires Rukeyser to ponder our love/hate
relationship with our body, our desire for magic and acceptance of
illusion, the link between exhibitionism and exorcism, and the
eroticism of bondage and the myth of escapism. And then there's his
wife Bess, emblematic, for Rukeyser, of longing and stoicism, who
utters one of the poet's most resounding lines, 'What would happen
if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split
open.--Booklist
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