– Sean Dixon
A play based around the thematic unit of Albrecht Dürer's 01506 oil painting “The Feast of the Rosary.” The story takes place 100 years later in 01606, after the Roman Pope of the day excommunicated the entire city-state of Venice, amidst them, the remaining papist Catholics, and against Protestant Lutherans and Calvinists.
It starts off with very big homages to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, framing the play as a historical mystery with Archbishop Borromeo as the detective-inquisitor. Without giving much away though, its true aims are different than Eco's, and its ending is not married to what its beginning suggests. Part of its artistry is just how seamlessly it transitions from one to the other. The play finishes as a somewhat polemical work, not at all adhering to what we might consider the traditional structure of a drama. I wonder with what media intention Mr. Dixon wrote this in mind for: a play to be performed, or a script to be read? I felt I understood it better as a script, and I am curious if seeing it performed would even have the same effect at all.
