« Mayor Bloomberg Says NYC Traffic Congestion is Good | Main | Atlantic Yards Dust Up: ACORN's Bertha Lewis vs. MAS's Kent Barwick »
August 2, 2006
In ‘A Stone Carver,’ a Father Fights Omnivorous Progress
Yesterday's NY Times Arts Section ran Andrea Stevens's review of the "The Stone Carver," a play loosely based on the playwrite's family's own experience with the State of New Jersey, which took their home to build a road. The online audio slide show gives more details of the real-life story — New Jersey never built the road, used the family's house as an office and eventually bulldozed the house to plant a field of grass.
Mr. Mastrosimone’s play is timely, given the Supreme Court ruling last year that government can use the power of eminent domain to clear space for private development. That his father’s property was razed for a highway ultimately built elsewhere is the all-too-real-life ending of the offstage story. Agostino would understand. Is there a difference, he asks, between what he escaped — extortion by the Mafia in Sicily — and what he found, a government that can demolish an entire functioning neighborhood?
“A Stone Carver” continues through Sept. 3 at the SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Varick Street, South Village, (212) 691-1555.
Posted by lumi at August 2, 2006 11:19 PM