Word: cantata
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...Cantata 2000." This year, the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) found a new song with the help of the accomplished director and composer Elizabeth Swados. "Cantata 2000"--composed, adapted and directed by Swados--was performed this spring on the Loeb Mainstage. The second professional director to work on a major undergraduate production as part of the Harvard-Radcliffe Visiting Director Project, Swados helped transform the stage into an off-Broadway production...
...Saturday, I caught the final performance of "Cantata 2000," this year's Visiting Director's Project which played on the Loeb Mainstage. I wasn't been sure what I was getting into. (Actually, I thought it was a Spanish dance show.) But it turned out to be a musical in the vein of "Rent," interspersed with monologues. I say in the vein of "Rent," because it dealt with similar issues of sexuality, identity and technology on a pop-music soundtrack. But "Cantata 2000" was better than "Rent." By a long shot...
...Cantata 2000" was the best piece of work to have shown at Harvard in the last three years. The talented student cast delivered their own diatribes, as if they were written for a Forensics League contest "Picture the Millennium." Among the smartest was the entry from Dani D. Krasner '97, a feminist rant which evoked her frustration with below-grade men in painfully high-noted terms. Another excellent piece, "Something to Tell You," written by Visiting Director Elizabeth Swados, was a love song in which a male bisexual and female bisexual reveal their orientations to each other at the same...
...definition of "love" does not count the "one" as "one among many," as these two bisexuals were all too pleased to do. And in their insincerity, I detected the root of the show, what made it so successful, and why it resonated. "Cantata 2000" represented the artistic high point of the undistracted sense of irony that pervades our culture. In the singers' voices, I heard moments of beauty. But in their words, I understood no appreciation for the real. Even in the staged poetry lounge, the poet becomes a vehicle for nonsense, and then an object for beating...
...Cantata 2000's experimental treatment of works by young writers is an important success, demonstrating how different forms of expression can be combined in a vibrant theatrical creation. The production is also valuable as sheer entertainment. The musical numbers are funny and moving, and the ten talented actors are engaging and play all of the roles with a seemingly unending reserve of energy. The show's approach to storytelling is original and holds together a unique panorama of current emotions and ideas, lending hope not only to the turn of millennium but to the ability of theater to entertain...