Produced and engineered by bennett (chillroom@killradio.org)
With thanks to my listeners, killradio.org, and podomatic.
The Chill Room, 6 November 2009, 11:00pm PST, on killradio.org.
128k, mono, 9 minutes.
In 1929 Federico Garcia Lorca left Spain and relocated to New York City in the U.S. He did not speak English and experienced America in the late 20s as an outsider, drawn to the poor and disadvantaged and charmed by American cinema. Besides his collection Poet in New York, he also wrote a "closet drama" entitled Buster Keaton's Walk, which was not published until the 1960s. As in many surrealist plays of the time, it is unstageable as written. As a stage director I worked for months on finding a way to make it work, developing many different and sometimes frenetic versions with much action, but finally settled on the version that you will hear. It is not a radio play as such, but a description of the play coming to life. When I performed the final version at ReCherChez in New York, one audience member gave me the greatest compliment I ever received: "I didn't know the theater could do that."