March 28-Asbury Crestwood United Methodist Church, presented by Dzieci Theatre Company
Asbury Crestwood United Methodist Church will be hosting a very special event on Holy Thursday, March 28 at 7 pm. Dzieci Theatre Company of Manhattan will be presenting “A Passion According to Matthew: A Dramatic Choral Liturgy Unbound.” This event will take place in the church’s main sanctuary at 167 Scarsdale Road in Tuckahoe. Admission is free, but donations are gratefully accepted, with all donations going directly to Dzieci Theater. Doors open 15 minutes prior to presentation.
Dzieci is an experimental theatre ensemble dedicated to a search for the “sacred” through the medium of theatre. Integrating theatrical techniques, ritual forms derived from Native American and Eastern spiritual disciplines, and an ethic based securely in Humanistic Psychology, Dzieci aims to create a theatre that is as equally engaged with personal transformation as it is with public presentation.
For Easter, 2012, Dzieci Theatre was invited to work with a small group of nuns at The Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, CT to create a Passion for their Holy Week. The experience was life-changing for all involved, and inspired Dzieci to seek the essence of this sacred ritual. In dramatizing the Holy Week portion of the Gospel of Matthew, Dzieci Theatre has refined the liturgy from the earliest existing translations, relying heavily on the Aramaic Pashita, incorporating Hebraic song and chant, and ritual elements of Judaism, and set their revision in the shadow of the Warsaw Ghetto. The group has since revisited, refined, and presented A Passion each Holy Week since 2012. The performance at Asbury will be Dzieci’s first appearance in Westchester County.
Whether Christian or Jew or Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Zen, A Passion appeals to the human spirit in everyone and our essential desire for communion.
“Any corps of actors that can cause a hush to fall upon its audience, such that the angel of silence is not just flying by but is still hovering, must, as they say, be doing something right.”
~ John Osburn, TheatreScene ~
