Stonesthrow Theater
The Burning Reed- An Evening with Jalaladdin Rumi
10/15-17 7:30 pm 10/18 2 pm 10/22-23 7:30 pm 10/24-25 2 pm
Wendell Meetinghouse 1 Morse Village Rd, Wendell MA
For two weekends, Thursday through Sunday October 15-25, the newly formed Stonesthrow Theater will present The Burning Reed: An Evening with Jalaladdin Mohammed Rumi at the Wendell Meetinghouse, written and performed with new versions of Rumi’s stories and poems by Joe Laur, and directed by Tim Holcomb.
Evening performances are scheduled for October 15, 16, 17, 22 and 23 at 7:30 pm; 2:00 pm matinee performances are scheduled for October 18, 24 and 25. All performances take place at the Wendell Meetinghouse (1 Morse Village Rd. Wendell, MA). Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door, or $10 for Card to Culture participants. Thursday tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Advance tickets are available at https://patron.
Why is a 13th Century Persian cleric the best-selling English language poet in the US? Why did Rumi refer to his impending death as his wedding night? What was the nature of his relationship with the wandering mystic Shams, and how did their closeness estrange his son and lead to the early death of his daughter-in-law?
These questions and more are addressed in a new one-person show being staged as the first offering of Stonesthrow Theater, a new theater company in residence at the 1846 Wendell Meetinghouse. The play is the brainchild of Joe Laur, who wrote the script and created original versions of dozens of Rumi’s poems and stories for the production. Laur also plays the title character of Jelaladdin Mohammed Balki, more widely known today as Rumi.
“I’ve been sitting with the idea of crafting a Rumi show for about 30 years, ever since I was first exposed to his poetry, primarily through the free verse translations of Coleman Barks”, Laur says. “Following the success and good reviews of my performance as The Captain in Court Dorsey’s original play Swamped last fall, I was inspired and encouraged to bring Rumi to the stage.”
Laur’s original versions of Rumi’s poems employed much the same process used by Coleman Barks in his widely read popular versions. However, instead of reaching back to late 19th and early 20th century scholarly English translations, as Barks did, Laur used Claude AI to locate the original Farsi sources, give word for word, literal translations, along with an explanation of key cultural and theological concepts, and then he crafted contemporary versions in his own voice.
“What I have reached for in my versions of Rumi’s writings is broad fidelity to the original text and poetry, while making it immediate and accessible to a contemporary audience. In all honesty, I think my versions are a little more faithful to the original cultural and theological themes than Barks’, while still speaking strongly to our current time.”
https://patron.
