Pataphysics, as invented by Alfred Jarry, is the science of imaginary solutions. Had Jarry been a Dante buff, he might have invented the screwy, hilarious, quirky characters that La Divina Caricatura strings together. Written by Lee Breuer, this trilogy of plays, adapted from his previous short stories, introduces us to: Rose the Dog (who thinks she is a woman); John, the junkie filmmaker (who is Rose the Dog’s lover); Ponzi Porco, PhD (a pig in love with the New York Times); and the Warrior Ant (who, to impress his father, Trotsky the Termite, declares perpetual revolution of the bugs of the fifth world and vanquishes the Liberal Establishment on the White House lawn). Each of these souls is on his or her own pilgrimage and, without a Virgil or Beatrice to guide them, often guide each otheronly to get turned completely around.               La Divina Caricatura is a darkly comedic look at the Dante we never knew, but had a hunch was there.Praise for the original short stories   A comic spectacle. . . . An acid-trip collage of philosophy, mythology, corny jokes, and lyric poetry.”New York Times

La Divina Caricatura: Bunraku Meets Motown (Enactments)

Literature & Fiction

BREUER, Lee

Dramas & Plays

Seagull Books

This unique book is a graphic novel and performance poem, a mixed-media musical cartoon, an animated feature film come to life. Lee Breuer’s La Divina Caricatura is in the pataphysical tradition of Alfred Jarry—if Jarry had been a Dante fan. In this play we meet unforgettable characters: Rose the Dog, who thinks she is a woman; her lover John, a junkie filmmaker; Ponzi Porco, PhD, a pig in love with the New York Times; and the Warrior Ant, who, to impress his father, Trotsky the Termite, declares the “perpetual revolution” of the bugs of the fifth world. Each a soul on its own pilgrimage, seldom with a Virgil or a Beatrice to guide them, they often try to guide each other, only to get more lost. A dazzling, comic, potent mix of ideas and character, invention and reality, the plays in La Divina Caricatura reinvigorate the stage for our time.

In an astonishing blend of cultural idioms, Lee Breuer merges the driving rhythms of rock music, the imagery of hotels and drive-ins, and the language of the street with the lyricism of dreams, of memory, of fairy-tale fantasy. The result is what he terms performance poetry” intensely personal works that have evolved from narrative poems into highly original works for the stage. Here, collected for the first time, are Breuer’s poems into highly original works for the stage. Here, collected for the first time, are Breuer’s poems and their performance scripts, with details of their stagings under his direction. The title work of the volume, Sister Suzie Cinema, is a doo-wop opera” inspired by the author’s coming of age amidst the pop culture of the 50s. Other works include Haji, a multimedia, one-character collage charting a woman’s personal pilgrimage; Red Beads, a Halloween fairy tale turned nightmare; Lies!, a jive satire of sex and money; A Prelude to Death in Venice, the saga of a street-smart puppet named John whose life is always a pay-phone call away; and The Warrior Ant, Breuer’s latest, the Latin/reggae mythical journey of a modern day every ant.” Critical acclaim for the performance works in this volume Haji A haunting poetic monologue.” Stephen Holden, The New York Times Sister Suzie Cinema A fantasy about fantasies about the way movies, music and other cultural artifacts shape what we feel.” Jon Pareles, The New York Times A Prelude to Death in Venice A stunning theatre piece.” New Statesman The Warrior Ant [Breuer’s] astonishing marriages of disparate elements produce great joy.” Michael Feingold, The Village Voice Lee Breuer is a founding member of the acclaimed avant-garde company Mabou Mines and the creator of the internationally renowned Gospel at Colonus. He has long been considered one of our most gifted theatrical innovators.

Sister Suzie Cinema: Collected Poems and Performances 1976-1986

Theatre Communications Group

I’ve been in a lot of shows in my life, and I've thought a lot of em were pretty good, but this is a masterpiece.” Morgan Freeman An ancient drama explodes into a hand-clapping, soul-stirring gospel musical.” Chicago Tribune One of the most marvelous shows the decade Colonus is a triumph of reconciliation, bringing together black and white, pagan and Christian, ancient and modern in a sunburst of joy that seems to touch the secret heart of civilization itself.” -Jack Kroll, Newsweek Writing at the end of his own long life, in Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles depicted his doomed hero’s final hours; at the moment of his death the aged Oedipus is free at last. Envisioning this rarely performed meditation on mortality as a rousing service in a black church, Lee Breuer has created a remarkable text based on Robert Fitzgerald’s splendid translation. Rearranging, simplifying, cutting here and enhancing there, Breuer has above all honored the spirit and the poetry of Sophocles's lovely work, giving it a new life in this time and place. Inspired by the joyous faith at the heart of African-American Christianity, Breuer and composer Bob Telson have turned a momentary wish of Sophocles’ chorus into a central desire of Oedipus himself. I wish the wind would lift me,” he sings, so I could look with the eyes of the angels.” The fundamental action of The Gospel of Colonus is to lift him up” at the hour of Oedipus’ death to celebrate his life, to journey through grief to triumphal resurrection. Man,” says lead actor Morgan Freeman, this is what theatre is all about.” Lee Breuer is a founding member of the acclaimed avant-garde company Mabou Mines. He has written and directed many groundbreaking works for theatre including a trilogy of Animations,” A Prelude to Death in Venice and Haji. Sister Suzie Cinema, a cinema collection of his poems and performances, was previously published by TCG. Bob Telson’s recent projects include collaborating with Breuer on The Warrior Ant and composing the score for the film Bagdad Café.

The Gospel at Colonus

Animations: A Trilogy for Mabou Mines

Arts & Photography

Performing Arts

Performing Arts Journal Publications

Since he first arrived on the New York art/theatre/performance scene in 1970, Lee Breuer has been at the forefront of the American theatrical avant-garde, creating challenging works both independently and with Mabou Mines, the company he co-founded with JoAnne Akalaitis, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow. By blending disciplines and techniques from widely different cultures, he has created a unique performance genre fusing sound and musical components, visual arts, and arresting movement/dance/puppetry into a groundbreaking form.
 Breuer’s work as a director includes radical adaptations of major works, such as his celebrated stagings of The Lost Ones by Samuel Beckett, The Gospel at Colonus, inspired by Sophocles, a gender-reversed King Lear, and a revolutionary reinterpretation of Ibsen with Mabou Mines DollHouse.
 Breuer has also been a prolific writer who redefines the concept of character and the use of biography in such works as The Shaggy Dog Animation, A Prelude to Death in Venice, Hajj, Ecco Porco, and La Divina Caricatura in a distinctive American voice.
 In this volume, theatre historian and journalist Stephen Nunns has assembled a unique look into one of contemporary theatre’s most singular creative minds. Using interviews and excerpts from Breuer’s writings, with added historical commentary, the thrilling result is equal parts autobiography, artistic manifesto, and critical exploration. Extensively illustrated with photographs of his work from around the world, this is a one-of-a-kind portrait of the artist and theatrical activist at work.

Getting Off: Lee Breuer on Performance

Humor & Entertainment

Related to his successful plays Ecco Porco, The Shaggy Dog Animation, Prelude, and Epidog, La Divina Caricatura is the first two parts of a trilogy of fiction that Breuer describes as "a loose sendup of Dante, with an Inferno, a Purgatorio, and a Paradisio. But instead of being sequential, they are intercut. And the main characters each have his own realm—the dog is in hell, the pig is in purgatory, and the ant (who will figure in part 3) . . . is in heaven."As The New York Times described La Divina Caricatura is "a comic spectacle . . . an acid-trip collage of philosophy, mythology, corny jokes, and lyric poetry." But the chaotic structure of the work definitely creates an energy that is at once hilariously funny and, if not tragic, animated by the pathos of living at the beginning of a century which at times appears heading toward terror.Lee Breuer is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Mabou Mines.

La Divina Caricatura: A Fiction (Green Integer)

Green Integer

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BREUER, Lee. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by BREUER, Lee

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BREUER, Lee. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

La Divina Caricatura: Bunraku Meets Motown (Enactments)

La Divina Caricatura: Bunraku Meets Motown (Enactments)

Sister Suzie Cinema: Collected Poems and Performances 1976-1986

The Gospel at Colonus

Animations: A Trilogy for Mabou Mines

Getting Off: Lee Breuer on Performance

La Divina Caricatura: A Fiction (Green Integer)