Ildiko Nemeth, Artistic Director of New Stage Theatre Company, is bringing her signature blend of multimedia, inventive choreography and striking visual design to the first English-language stage adaptation of “Near to the Wild Heart,” the modernist masterpiece by Clarice Lispector (1920-1977).
The Brazilian-Jewish novelist is now the object of a long-overdue surge of worldwide literary popularity. “Near to the Wild Heart” (1943), her sensational debut novel, is the story of a woman trapped in a passionless marriage. Rather than a conventional plot, it offers us a woman’s inner life that is as clear and lustrous as any in world literature. Nemeth adapts “Near to the Wild Heart” into a multimedia theatre piece that evokes a rich, expansive female interior as it dramatizes the life and passions of the book’s heroine. Her playscript employs verbatim excerpts of Alison Entrekin’s faithful translation to reflect–as much as possible–the novel’s unique voice and literary effect.
The book has been adapted to the stage only twice before and both times in French: in Paris in 2007 and in Belgium in 2008.