Quarry

Quarry

1978 · 82 min · Music, Drama

Monk’s meditation on WWII and recurring cycles of intolerance, fascism, and cruelty in history originated in 1976 as a live stage work utilizing elements of music, images, movement, dialogue, film, sound, and light. This film version, shot on 16mm in the Lepercq Space at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1977, was created in partnership with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as part of their initiative to document ground-breaking live performance for future restaging. QUARRY centers on a sick American child (played by Monk herself) whose world darkens as her illness progresses, this darkening including the rise of a dictator. A unique document of this innovative, boundary-blurring production, and a work of art on its own terms, replete with a film-within-a-film directed by Monk in 1975.

Directed by Meredith Monk · Written by Meredith Monk

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Cast

Meredith Monk Child
Ping Chong The Dictator
Steve Clorfeine Dictator's Aide
Tone Blevins Old Testament woman / Dictator
Daniel Ira Sverdlik Old Testament man / Dictator
Lanny Harrison Radio Singer / Announcer / Woman in a flowered dress / Dictator
Monica Moseley Woman at a table / Dictator
Pablo Vela Man with grey hair / Dictator
Lee Nagrin Woman with Gray Hair
Mary Shultz Woman at Table
Gail Turner Woman at a table
Anne Gentry Visitor at the table

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