Blue Beard - (Modern Plays) by Emma Rice (Paperback)

About the Book

"Poetry: According to the scholar and poet, Charles Stein: "Magic is pragmatic, or better performative, phenomenology. But phenomenology is the magic of ontogeny." Robert Podgurski's In the Shadow of This Branch is itself deeply invested in a thaumaturgy or wonder working of the magic of nascency. The poems in this collection beg the question of what leads up to and what is happening as things labor to come into being. As Michal Ajvas expressed in his novel, Empty Streets "I realized that in trying to express what a thing communicated, I was making a thing of the communication-an unusual and fantastic thing perhaps, but of what is not yet a thing, a matter from which things are formed." And yet, Podgurski is not so presumptuous as to assert he knows precisely what this process of emergence is, but that it warrants acknowledgment, further exploration, and to facilitate the possession of the senses in its sway"--

Book Synopsis

When someone tells you not to look, OPEN THE BLOODY DOOR!

Blue Beard the Magician makes hearts flutter and pupils dilate. With a wink, a stroke and a flick - things just seem to vanish. Cards, coins, scarves... and women.

Puff! Gone. Without a trace. He meets his match when his young bride discovers his dark and murderous secret. She summons all her rage, all her smarts and all her sisters to bring the curtain down on his tyrannous reign.

Emma Rice brings her own brand of theatrical wonder to this most beguiling and disturbing of tales. With her signature sleight of hand, Blue Beard explores curiosity and consent, violence and vengeance - all through an intoxicating lens of music, wit and tender truth.

Written by Emma Rice, this edition was published to coincide with Wise Children's 2024 tour, in a co-production with Birmingham Rep, HOME Manchester, Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, and York Theatre Royal.

About the Author

Emma Rice is the proud and excited Artistic Director of her new company, Wise Children. She adapted and directed Wise Children's debut production, Angela Carter's Wise Children (The Old Vic/UK tour). As Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe (2016-18), she directed Romantics Anonymous, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Little Matchgirl (and Other Happier Tales). For the previous 20 years, she worked for Kneehigh as an actor, director and Artistic Director.