4
Rimbaud
in New York
Written and Directed by Steve Cosson
Poems by Arthur Rimbaud translated
by John Ashbery
Produced by BAM with major support
from the Poetry Foundation
Songs by multiple composers*
March 1 – 6, 2016
BAM
Brooklyn, NY
Boy genius, rebel, visionary, Rimbaud set off a
bomb in the world of letters with the publication
of Illuminations. 130 years later, this dazzling book
of poems, written mostly in prose, continues
to amaze. John Ashbery’s recent highlyacclaimed translation offers us these poems
through the wonderfully precise and always
surprising language of one of America’s greatest
contemporary poets. For Rimbaud in New York,
The Civilians create a wildly original, playful and
enriching inquiry into the meaning and legacy
of Illuminations, staging how these revolutionary
poems continue to resonate in the American
imagination, setting off explosions in the minds
of new readers. The show finds Rimbaud in
the 1950s of Ashbery and Frank O’Hara, in the
downtown scene of the 1970s and in the many
artists and musicians he’s influenced—Patti Smith,
Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, David Wojnarowicz
and Jean-Michel Basquiat, to name a few. But
most centrally, the show focuses on the poems
themselves, which The Civilians animate through
performance, song and an eclectic theatricality
that brings Rimbaud into the present, here and
alive in New York City.
* Featuring songs by Adam Cochran, Michael
Friedman, Rebecca Hart, Joseph Keckler, Grace
McLean, David Cale and Matthew Dean Marsh.