The Tiger Lillies’ “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” Top Theater Attraction at Williams College [Berkshire on Stage]

The Tiger Lillies
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Oct. 24 | 8:00 PM | $10 / $3 students

The Tiger Lillies are a three-piece band, formed in 1989 and based in London. The English trio tours worldwide, and won international acclaim with their opera “Shockheaded Peter.” Defying any singular description, the Tiger Lillies’ surreal musical style is something of a mix between opera, gypsy punk and old Paris. Masters of dark humor, their music plays in the intersection between offensive and delightful. It has been called macabre, darkly humorous, perversely beautiful and impossible to pigeonhole.

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a collaboration with the visual artist Mark Holthusen, immerses the audience in the world of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s surreal ballad of death and enchantment on the high seas with multimedia staging that shifts from song to song to create a production somewhere between a film and a concert. Multi-screen projected animation and video, along with other fancy stage tricks, work in tandem to create a virtual baroque production – a unique musical experience that’s as quirky and unexpected as the Tiger Lillies themselves.

This performance is made possible by the W. Ford Schumann ’50 Endowment for the Arts and the Lipp Family Fund for Performing Artists.

INTEGRATED PROGRAMMING:

6pm: Cocktails and Context: Macabre Musicals, Subversive Singing
Co-hosted by Williamstown Theatre Festival’s Artistic Director Jenny Gersten and Williams College Theatre Department’s Chair David Eppel. Open bar.

10pm: Post show Q & A
with Mark Holthusen moderated by Professor of Art Liza Johnson.

Click to read the rest at Berkshire on Stage.