Adelind, with Cry of the Mountain, wins best documentary at the 2012 United Solo Festival
Conceived and Performed by Adelind Horan
If you’ve seen the show you know it is an award winning show. But even after a great run at the Captial Firnge, a fantasitic (and 5-star reviewed) run at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe and all the shows in Virginia, well, it’s nice to win a freakin award at such a big festival.
Well deserved and well earned — Addie has put years of work into this show – and others have contributed generously. Thanks to Max Werham who played the banjo for the show at United Solo and the Ed Fest and many others, to Bud Branch who was banjo man in Virginia, Maryland and DC including the Cap Fringe Run, to the Hamner Theatre, Live Arts, Play On and Four County Players who help nuture the show, and of course the original Hampsire band and crew for helping Addie launch the production.
Also, we have had the support of Appalachian Voices, Heartwood, and many other lovely people from many other gourps united in the goal to Stop Mountaintop Removal!
2012 United Solo, the world’s largest solo theatre festival, presents one hundred solo productions! All shows are staged at Theatre ROW: 410 West 42nd Street, New York City.
Conceived and Performed by Adelind Horan, Virginia
Sun., Oct. 14 at 6:00pm (running time: 60 min.)
drama, comedy, storytelling, documentary
One performer, twelve characters, and a banjo. Verbatim stories about mountaintop removal, gathered from interviews conducted by the actor in the mountains of Appalachia. Coal miners, mining executives, artists, hillbillies, scholars, and activists reflect on the coal industry’s best-kept secret. “‘Cry of the Mountain’ balances entertainment with an environmentalist message thanks to a nuanced script and outstanding delivery.” – Georgetown Voice. (Best of the Capital Fringe 2011).Director: Ray Nedzel. Accompanied by Bud Branch. Photo by Jeremy Felson. Recommended for: teenagers, adults, elderly, theatre community, LGBT community, social/environmental activists. Links:artist, show, video, related, related2.
2012 United Solo, the world’s largest solo theatre festival, presents one hundred solo productions! All shows are staged at Theatre ROW: 410 West 42nd Street, New York City. TICKETS, with a price of $18, are available at the Theatre ROW Box Office and online through Telecharge at www.telecharge.com. You may also call Telecharge at 212-239-6200. When placing your reservation, please provide: the FESTIVAL name (United Solo Theatre Festival), the name of THEATRE (Theatre ROW – The Studio Theatre), and the specific DAY and TIME of SHOW you would like to see.
A free monthly series exploring vital social justice, environmental and anmimal rights issues
September 17, 2012
New Deal Café
113 Centerway
Roosevelt Center
Greenbelt, MD 20770
301-474-5642
Cry of the Mountain
a documentary play from Appalachia about the people who live with MountainTop Removal
One woman, 13 characters and a banjo. Real stories from America’s coal fields. Verbatim. Coal miners, mining executives, mountaineers, hillbillies and protesters. Bluegrass music and cookies at every show.
Mountaintop removal is blowing up the mountain to get the coal underneath. ‘It’s like going to the barber for a hair cut, and having him cut off your head, shoulders and chest.’
‘It’s like Anna Deavere Smith … with a banjo’ (NPR)
‘Adelind Horan is a fantastic talent!’ (Daily Progress)
‘Comparisons to the early stage work John Leguizamo are inevitable’ (C-ville Weekly).
This is wonderful, simple, powerful and true piece of theatre/performance art, in which Adelind portrays those involved with and affected by Mountaintop Removal in Appalachia. The characters are performed verbatim from interviews conducted last summer while volunteering with coal related clean up in West Virginia and Kentucky. Miners, mining executives, mountaineers, environmentalists, scientists, hillbillies and protesters.
Cry of the Mountain - Greenbelt, Md - October 2, 2012, 3pm
Cry of the Mountain, back from it’s wonderful month long performance in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is all cranked up to perform in Greenbelt, Maryland.
We are part of the closing celebration of their Artists in Residence:
Three Weeks is a key source for honest theatre reviews from the Fringe. They gave Cry of the Mountain, the top rating of 5 stars. And, the reviewer came to the show twice.
ED2011 Theatre Review: Cry of the Mountain (Whole Theatre)
Three Weeks - The biggest reviewer at the Edinburgh Festival
The mountains of Appalachia are vanishing into rubble. Adelind Horan brilliantly takes the stories of twelve real people whose lives have in some way been affected by mountaintop removal mining, and turns it into a mesmerisingly emotional piece of theatre.
Slipping effortlessly from one character to the next, Horan unveils a story of exploitation and political frustration that is breathlessly moving in its intensity. Her portrayal of Ed Wiley, a former miner turned activist, brings tears to her own eyes as well as those of the audience and it is heartbreakingly beautiful to watch the power of his story take hold of her with such passion.
‘Cry of the Mountain’ is an unmissable piece of theatre.
Yesterday, we were delighted by a 4 star review from The Scotsman, the most reliable reveiw source, and the national paper of Scotland. The review is linked and pasted below. The print version listed Cry of the Mountain as a “Hot Show!”
As you will read, the show, Addie, Max, and even the cookies got a rave review.
A DEFIANTLY low-key affair, this one-woman, multi-character verbatim piece is a textbook example of both educating without preaching and of keeping an audience absolutely gripped with just one voice onstage.
The excellent Adelind Horan speaks the words of a procession of real people from the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky, each of them on either side of the live debate about the mining practice of mountain-top removal.
The piece has been beautifully structured, offering a dozen vignettes taken from interviews with each of the people involved. These monologues convey the original conversations with apparently documentary precision, recreating stutters, hesitations and, at one bewildering point, a man’s panicked fear that a poisonous spider has crawled inside his shirt. Horan’s impersonations are unstinting, with forthright young women, beleagured middle-aged men and wise, sad old timers, all finding themselves perfectly inhabited.
These testimonies combine empathy with balance. Ed Wiley, an ex-miner and campaigner who remembers pumping waste into underground caverns, almost breaks down with guilt when recalling his granddaughter’s illness through water contamination. Matt Landon, a volunteer organiser with United Mountain Defense, remembers what he considers his politically motivated arrest for passing an unstaffed checkpoint on a public road. Yet coal industry administrator Don Gibson points out that coal provides the majority of America’s energy needs, and that he would rather see his son go into the industry than be sent to the Middle East to fight for oil.
It all adds up to an unfailingly human portrait of the situation, punctuated by moments of crystalline emotional resonance: actress Stephanie Pistello’s description of seeing a mountain top sheared off with dynamite to claw out the coal within; housewife and retired sociologist Lynda Ewan handing out home-baked cookies (they’re very tasty) and considering that mankind’s survival might be dependent on the grassroots tendency towards democracy being stronger than that towards fascism; elderly “keeper of the mountains” Larry Gibson declaring bravely that “they gon’ get you anyway if you don’t fight back”. Soundtracked by Max Wareham’s rich live banjo playing, this wonderful and often amusing show recasts the “gap-toothed and dehumanised” stereotype of the Appalachians as a vibrant community of historic conflict and change, and an important environmental battleground on America’s doorstep.
Well, on Saturday, July 30th, we pack up our Appalachian show and take it to the world’s largest theatre festival. And If the results are anything like the reviews of our 5 show run at the Capital Fringe Festival, we’ll be in Scottish Heaven.
Addie in the Capital Fringe Tent. Photo by Bud Branch.
Let me post our reviews here so you can read them if you’d like:
Read the Review Here. Cry of the Mountain from the Fringe
The experience of being an audience member can be kind of alienating, caught behind the fourth wall. But every once in awhile along comes a performance that can truly feel intimate, in which a person communicates their ideas to the audience with breathtaking efficacy…. (read more)