The latest adaption of Frank Wedekind's Lulu’s is Mlle. God, a new play loosely adapted by Nicholas Kazan from the original Wedekind texts. Naturally, many of the reviews have mentioned Louise Brooks, who played Lulu in G.W. Pabst's 1929 film adaption.
Kazan is an Oscar-nominated writer and director and the son of acclaimed director Elia Kazan, as well as the father of Zoe Kazan (who played the role of Lulu in a production at Yale University.) The Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA premiere of Mlle. God runs through March 6. Read more at http://www.examiner.com/louise-brooks-in-national/lulu-character-featured-new-play-mlle-god#ixzz1DEKc9VYd
In Mlle. God, Kazan has re-invented Wedekind’s Lulu, creating a muscular and outrageous dark comedy that is a paean to sex, art, and living in the millisecond. “I was inspired by Wedekind, by Pabst, and most of all by Louise Brooks’ luminous comic performance,” says Kazan. “Sex is, in a way, so simple...the means by which we reproduce. But the experience itself can be so powerful that it overwhelms us...as Lulu does. This is why the character, with her playful joy, still feels so dangerous and shocking: she refuses to assign a moral weight to what is, after all, a biological necessity."
Interview with director Nicholas Kazan in the Los Angeles Times - http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/02/the-spotlight-nicholas-kazan-on-mlle-god-at-atwater-village-theatre.html
ReplyDelete"What inspired you to reconsider Lulu?"
Kazan: Watching Louise Brooks in “Pandora’s Box,” G.W. Pabst’s 1929 film adaptation of Wedekind’s plays. Wedekind saw his story as a tragedy; Louise Brooks sees it as a triumph.