Wallis Knot has begun creating an original theatrical performance piece based on the life of 17th century Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo Merisi de Caravaggio.  His innovative paintings depicted an unflinching recreation of nature and reality, and were highlighted by his stark use of lighting.  He is also well remembered for his violent, passionate and contraversial lifestyle, dying before the age of 40 shortly after killing a rival and fleeing Rome. 

While on a visit to Rome, Italy, we visited our favorite Caravaggio paintings...and ate lots of good pasta. 

(Left) one of Caravaggio's large scale religious works "Madonna de Loreto" or Madonna with Pilgrims in a church near Piazza Navona, San't Agostino, shocking in its use of a then recognizable prostitute, Lena, as the model for Mary; (Right) "Narcissus", part of the Galleria Corsini collection, temporarily housed at the Pallazzo Barberini (we luckily came upon it during our March 2005 trip); and (Below) portrait of Beatrice Cenci (although not a Caravaggio painting).

The Caravaggio script also includes a subplot involving the tragic execution of Beatrice Cenci (in 1599) -- an 18 year old girl who killed her father after being imprisoned and brutally raped by him for years.  The popular opinion was that the killing of her father was nothing more than avenging her honor and that she should be released, but Pope Clement VIII needed her inheritance to build his Clemente Chapel.  Her execution was viewed by the young Caravaggio, then in Rome, as part of his professional duty as an artist.  Treatises on painting prescribed that "to represent the torments of the early Christian martyrs, observe the gestures of those condemned to death.  Note their expressions when they mount the scaffold, their colouring, the movements of their eyes, their precise manner of frowning."

The production features Richard Omar as Caravaggio and Kathy Hendrickson as one of his many prostitute models.  The company members are currently working on their stage combat skills in order to bring the wild life of this volatile painter to the stage. 

  In March 2005, Wallis Knot began rehearsing a newly edited version of the Shakespeare classic Hamlet with a planned premiere this Winter.  The production features Richard Omar in the title role, and includes a beach party go-go dance to welcome Hamlet back to the castle for his father's funeral to the tune of Mel Torme's "Coming Home Baby Now," a Marilyn Monroe look alike Gertrude, a tango dancing sword fight finale between Hamlet and his ex-girlfriend Laertes, a dripping wet Ophelia skulking around the castle after her own dead body ballet in the graveyard, video surveillance cameras that capture Hamlet's evey move, a cold war era war-room and television news coverage, and perhaps even a puppet or two...