“I used to believe / In pretty pictures”
“I used to believe / In pretty pictures”

Summary/Abstract: A review of the play America, directed by Jan Klata for the Schauspielhaus Bochum (premiere: 28 April 2011). Kwaśniewska notes that although the aesthetics of the performance oscillate between a Disney cartoon, a fairy tale, and slapstick comedy, it remains remarkably bitter, ironic, and even melancholy. She says: “Klata has read America through the lens of the final chapter – the Great Theater of Oklahoma. His American utopia is a cheap, kitschy theater.” As such, the play reminds us that “the initiation process, which involves cutting through the reams of decorations, costumes, surfaces, and conventions, conceals the mysterious, terrifying, ugly, and blurred faces of America, utopia, or perhaps merely reality.”

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