Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Paul Muldoon on Handcart’s The Burial at Thebes

“I simply can’t imagine a better production of The Burial at Thebes. Handcart Ensemble is a spectacularly gifted group, absolutely equal to the subtleties of Heaney’s text. I’ll go anywhere to see anything they do.” —Paul Muldoon

Productions

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Past Shows

Alcestis

April / May 2007

In the final year of his life, the poet Ted Hughes turned to an unclassifiable, half-tragic/half-comedic play by Euripides about King Admetos, who escaped death by allowing his wife to voluntarily die in his place. The resulting adaptation, with its sharpened imagery and an exhilarating re-enactment of the Herculean Twelve Labors, is a masterpiece of wit and raw, penetrating dialogue. More

The Burial at Thebes

September 2006

In this adaptation of the Greek tragedy Antigone, Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney brings out the primal imagery of Sophocles’ phrases, infusing with vitality this ancient drama of state authority colliding with tribal loyalty and religious zeal. More

Two Yeats Plays

March/April 2006

The Cat and the Moon and The Only Jealousy of Emer, two emotionally gripping tales by the 20th century’s master poet about ghosts, desire, and heroic self-sacrifice. More

Coole Lady

April 2005

Coole Lady is a portrayal of Lady Gregory, the playwright, folklorist, and political firebrand whose patronage of Yeats and founding of the Abbey Theatre launched a literary renaissance in Ireland. More

Ordet

March/April 2004

Through its portrayal of a Danish farming family, Ordet deals in a penetrating and human way with the host of issues raised by religious belief in modern life, including the dangers of ideological rigidity and the life-giving power of childlike belief in the miraculous. More

Genesis

June 2003

Serpents, stolen innocence, fratricide, floods and human sacrifice work their universal magic through playwright/director Matthew Freeman’s imaginative weaving of five Middle English mini-dramas based on the mother of all creation myths. More

David and Bathsheba

November 2001

The origins of evil are examined in this compelling verse drama about a benevolent king’s fall from grace. More

The Mistress of the Inn

March 2001

A much-wooed but unrelenting hostess of an inn meets a visiting gentleman who has the distinction of taking no interest in her whatsoever. She immediately plots to remedy this state of affairs. More

The Wild Ass’s Skin

August 2000

Despairing of finding the fame and romantic ecstasy he craves, a suicidal young man comes upon a magical animal hide whose powers allow immediate gratification of his heart’s desires. More

Andromaque

August 1999

Unchecked passions descend into treachery and murder in this new Alexandrine verse translation of the French classic. More

About Us

Old Wine in New Bottles

Handcart Ensemble produces new adaptations, new translations, and new works for the theater, drawing primarily from classical sources. Read our mission statement for more information.

Gearing Up for 2008/09

Thanks to our patrons for supporting Oedipus at Colonus, touted by NYTheatre.com as “another feather in Handcart’s cap as the city’s most reliable and interesting presenter of contemporary renditions of classic theatre texts.” Our one-night benefit performance of W.B. Yeats’s Purgatory was another success, its sell-out box office returns laying the groundwork for an ambitious 2008/09 season that will include Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood as you’ve never seen it before. Watch for more details on this thrillingly crafted production, arriving in New York after years of development and acclaim at international theater festivals…