Gold Into Mud by Erik Ehn
“Red mud and straw are mulled to brick by the tide. The tide subsides. At ebb, penitents walk a brick road to the church. This is how Mont Saint Michelle was made. By the peace that lifts path made of all that forgetting.”
A World Premiere directed by Bruce DuBose
August 26 – 27, 2000 at HERE, New York City
A boy journeys to find his fortune and the Giant of fairytale legend. His fortune is his undoing. Shadow lovers, Weathervane roosters, and a rabid fox. Big Cheap Theatre.
Erik Ehn had been closely collaborating with Undermain for many years, while Undermain had just begun to test the waters of New York City with Lenora Champagne’s Coaticook the season previous. For their next collaboration, they decided to produce a fairytale of Erik’s own making. The result, Gold into Mud, explored the absurd cruelty that run beneath many classical fairytales the ilk of the Brother’s Grimm, while also investigating the ways that they seem in dialogue to the religiosity underlying all of Western tradition. The show was produced at HERE in association with Lincoln Center Theatre as part of their The American Living Room 2000 festival. Later that season, the company built upon this success, combining Gold Into Mud with Stripping for the Dead Man, which were combined to form Swedish Tales of Woe, premiering in Dallas that October.
