Angels, Not Strangers

Every arts group that has ever sought a grant has produced a mission statement, and often enough these are written in the Hegelian register of the lofty-abstruse.

But the mission statement of the Compagnia de’ Colombari is a fairly matter-of-fact account of what this company is and does:

Company Colombari is a collective of performing artists that generates theatre in surprising places. Colombari intentionally clashes cultures, traditions and art forms to bring fresh interpretation to the written word — old and new …

Colombari believes that every public place holds the potential to be a space for the sacred architecture of theater. Colombari commits to using any means possible to flesh out the written word and making it heard and deeply felt.

Colombari’s sacred architecture of theater took shape Saturday afternoon on the patio and portico of the Museum of the City of New York on Upper Fifth Avenue. The work being “theatered” (the word is mine this time) was Strangers and Other Angels, their “re-imagining of the medieval mystery plays.” Some years ago the company theatered this work in the streets of Orvieto, an ancient Etruscan city not far from Rome; and to see it unfold along Central Park, with the city buses lumbering past, was to feel New York and Orvieto and Rome all joined the way Langston Hughes, the evangelists, St. John of the Cross, and the internet creators of “What Does the Fox Say?” were all joined in the performance — and the way angels and urban mortals were joined by music, movement, and Shakespeare-accented spoken word.

Asked midway through just what was going on, I spontaneously answered: “Oh, it’s an annunciation piece — a series of annunciations set alongside one another and strung together.”

I hope that was answer enough.

Karin Coonrod exercises her imagination through the company, and she and they will be coming to Georgetown in the spring. More soon.

• 9 December 2013