...Whaling Museum (Douglass-Melville Conference, 2007). In the lobby immediately after the performance, he told me of his dream of adapting Moby-Dick for an inner-city audience at his Mixed Magic Theatre in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. That dream has now materialized in the production of Moby-Dick: Then and Now in the Pawtucket Armory from May 10-13, 2007.

Conceived as a way to build community among people of contrasting ages, income levels, social standing, ethnic identification, and educational achievement, this play is also an ambitious attempt to link the imaginary world that Melville created on the deck of the Pequod in the mid-nineteenth century with the real-world concerns of inner-city youth in Pawtucket and the greater Providence area in 2007. In an additional community-building gesture, Ricardo invited the Melville Society Cultural Project to join him in planning a Symposium in which scholars and artists would join the Pawtucket audience in exploring the question, "Why Moby-Dick Matters Now."

The play was staged in the cavernous Pawtucket Armory, its high, rounded rafters suggesting the interior space of a whale. The functional makeshift set featured the deck of a whale ship erected on open scaffolding over the underworld of an inner-city gang (who shared their space with a one-man jazz band directly under Captain Ahab's cabin). On the upper stage was enacted Melville's story of Ahab and his crew as embodied by an adult cast. In the lower space was Pitts-Wiley's story of Alba and her fellow gang members as embodied by youthful recruits of the Mixed Magic Theatre. As Ahab on the upper deck leads the crew of the Pequod in his relentless pursuit of the White Whale that has reaped away his leg, Alba on the street level leads her gang named The One in her relentless pursuit...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from Leviathan
Moby-Dick: reading, rewriting, and editing.(Lecture), June 01, 2007
All astir.(Melville Society's events and conferences), June 01, 2007
Secretary's report.(Melville Society)(Report), June 01, 2007
Treasurer's report.(Melville Society)(Financial report), June 01, 2007

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