All Astir

All Astir Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, Mixed Magic Theatre, Pawtucket, RI. R icardo Pitts-Wiley rubbed his eyes, passed his hands over his face, held them there for an intense moment, then looked up at the group assembled around the conference table, and said slowly and with emphasis: “It’s simple. We’re saying, if you read Moby-Dick, you will be better.” Mr. Pitts-Wiley is not referring to scholars or teachers or college students. He is talking about young people he knows in prisons and gangs, on streets and in schools in Pawtucket, RI. Young people who do not always read much. Whose parents do not always read much. When he gives them Moby-Dick, they come back shaking their heads and saying, “Rick, man, this is hard.” He tells them to keep reading. They are going to read the book. Then they will write and produce a theatrical performance, an adaptation of the novel in their own idiom. But they have to read the book, absorb it entirely. And not just for themselves. Mr. Pitts-Wiley would like to get ten thousand people in Pawtucket to read Moby-Dick. If their kids and neighbors and students are going to read it, why not everyone else? If they are going to see this play, they must, must read the book. It will make them better. It will make them a community. C
2007 The Authors Journal compilation C
2007 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing Inc L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 85 E X T R A C T S This is the vision of Ricardo and Bernadet Pitts-Wiley, founders and directors of Mixed Magic Theatre in Pawtucket. Their project involves literacy , performance, and the creative appropriation of cultural materials in different media. It also represents a convergence of many different institutions : community groups, business leaders, police, and schools in Pawtucket; the New Bedford Whaling Museum; the New Media Literacies study group at MIT; and the Melville Society, which through the Cultural Project will help organize a weekend symposium on May 11th -13th , culminating in the performance of Mr. Pitts-Wiley’s Moby Dick Project. The symposium, designed for students, teachers, parents, and artists, will include workshops on such topics as teaching Moby-Dick; whaling, cetology, art, and literary themes in the novel; adaptations in various media and in popular culture; artists’ creative responses to the book; the history of different texts and editions. The Mixed Magic Theatre has a small gallery space where artworks inspired by the novel might be exhibited; with film showings and musical performances , the weekend will be as much arts festival as scholarly or educational conference. Margaret Weigel, project manager of New Media Literacies, with Debora Lui, graduate student in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, plan to film Pitts-Wiley’s project from start to finish. The film will go into their creative Exemplars, a digital archive of projects that show artists working at the intersections of different media, cultures, and forms. Students in New Media Literacies after-school programs can use these Exemplars and other materials in the archive to inspire and inform narratives, performances, and multimedia productions of their own. The Pitts-Wileys can also use the film to distribute their project to other communities—including, the Cultural Project hopes, the next international Melville Society conference in Poland in August, 2007. With the coming together of these groups in January in New Bedford, the Cultural Project began an exciting year. Chief among the pleasures of this year’s meetings was the presence of two people new to its annual gatherings. John Bryant delivered the Melville Society lecture at the Whaling Museum’s 11th annual Moby-Dick Marathon. Titled “Moby-Dick: Reading, Rewriting, and Editing,” it included a lively set of images of different editions of the book and drew an enthusiastic crowd. Bryant’s ideas about the evolution of Melville’s texts meshed in provocative ways with the Museum’s interests in Melville and popular culture and with its own educational programs...