Quarry

Monk’s meditation on WWII and recurring cycles of intolerance, fascism, and cruelty in history originated in 1976 as a live stage work utilizing elements of music, images, movement, dialogue, film, sound, and light. This film version, shot on 16mm in the Lepercq Space at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1977, was created in partnership with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as part of their initiative to document ground-breaking live performance for future restaging. QUARRY centers on a sick American child (played by Monk herself) whose world darkens as her illness progresses, this darkening including the rise of a dictator. A unique document of this innovative, boundary-blurring production, and a work of art on its own terms, replete with a film-within-a-film directed by Monk in 1975.

Cast

Meredith Monk Child Ping Chong The Dictator

Steve Clorfeine Dictator's Aide

Tone Blevins Old Testament woman / Dictator

Daniel Ira Sverdlik Old Testament man / Dictator

Lanny Harrison Radio Singer / Announcer / Woman in a flowered dress / Dictator

Monica Moseley Woman at a table / Dictator

Pablo Vela Man with grey hair / Dictator

Lee Nagrin Woman with Gray Hair

Mary Shultz Woman at Table

Gail Turner Woman at a table

Anne Gentry Visitor at the table

Metadata from the source database.