Beowulf: Performance DVD and TV Documentary

THE PROJECT (cont'd):

The filming will be directed by Swedish film and theater director, Stellan Olsson in late November, early December 2005, in Northern Europe,

The production will also include:
1. an interview the harp maker, German instrument builder Rainer Thurau in his Wiesbaden workshop.
2. a roundtable discussion with three of the world's leading Beowulf scholars,
John Foley (Univ. Missouri), Marc Amodio (Vassar College) and Thomas Cable (Univ. Texas).

The editing of the DVD content will be completed by February 05 for a June 2006 release in the USA to correspond to Ben Bagby's performances at the Lincoln Center Festival opposite the world premier of the Julie Taymor/Elliot Goldenthal opera GRENDEL.

The documentary which will be produced concurrently with the DVD will tell the story of how Benjamin Bagby came to the Beowulf project and joined hands with producer-composer Charlie Morrow and his team. It is being co-produced by Jane Weiner, producer and director known for the television productions of Peter Sellar’s Mahabharata and Hamlet.

A video + 3D sound installation version is being created for Charles Morrow’s 3D sound cube which is receiving great attention in the US and Europe.

THE MARKET

There is a global market for this project, given all the recent excitement over Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’, Tolkien being a Beowulf expert, and the expected Hollywood production of a dramatic film on Beowulf.

This market is extended further because of the educational value of this production which will find a large audience in junior and senior high school English departments, libraries and all university English and Mediaeval Studies departments.The full DVD production is 2 hours with the interviews.

The one hour documentary will be cut for television as well as a 3- 5 minute music video.

Beowulf is production of Charles Morrow Productions LLC, New York. Morrow has a long history of new/old explorations of sound and oral poetry. Jon Aaron and Charlie Morrow are co-producers.

NOTES ON THE PERFORMANCE

“Mr. Bagby comes as close to holding hundreds of people in a spell as ever a man has...When he has finished, you leave with the overwhelming impression that you know the anonymous poet who created “Beowulf” more than a dozen centuries ago, that you have felt the man’s personality touch you.  That is much too rare an experience in theater.”
-- The New York Times


“Bagby is an uninhibited interpreter and actor.  His baritone is strong and expressive, his gestures simple and vivid.  He’s superb at creating characters....Like Tolkien, Bagby revels in the blood and gore of the story; he conveys both its earthy humor and its mixture of majesty, mystery and faith.  The performance is an extraordinary feat of scholarship, imagination, memory, musicianship and, most of all, story-telling....He has a communicative power that transcends language.”
-- The Boston Globe


Bagby’s presentation consists of the first third of the poem, up to the death of Grendel and celebration which follows.   He performs  seated on a simple stool onstage without a break or intermission in a marathon performance that lasts well over an hour. He also accompanies himself on a 6-stringed lyre, based on instruments from burials dating from the Viking era.  

One of the hallmarks of the Viking era in Europe was the tradition of poetry- the tradition that gave us the Icelandic Edda and the great Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf. Historical research and archeological discoveries have affirmed that these poems were, in all probability, not just recited, but sung. And the plucked string instrument that accompanied these early bards was the lyre    -- Lavrans Reimer-Møller 

The lyre which I am currently using is one of two different models built for me by Rainer Thurau of Wiesbaden, Germany, based on the remains of 2 instruments found in a 7th-century alemannic nobleman’s grave in Oberflacht, south of Stuttgart. -- Ben Bagby

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