Margaret Atwood to showcase gothic puppet show for Mary Beard

[demmiblue]

Margaret Atwood will show how she has gone from handmaids’ tales to handmade tales when she unveils her latest project: a puppet show version of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death.

The novelist is to be a guest on Mary Beard’s BBC Two arts show Front Row Late, hosted in lockdown from the study in Beard’s house. Atwood’s contribution is what Beard calls a “very surprising” version of Poe’s horror story: a puppet show choreographed by the author and her sister Ruth, with all the characters made from household objects.

“An empty bottle and some hand sanitiser take starring roles,” Beard writes in a blogpost.

Poe’s story, first published in 1842, tells the tale of a prince attempting to avoid a plague by hiding in his abbey.

Atwood’s version was as funny and engaging as it sounded, said Beard. “But, in our discussion, Atwood also raises some pressing questions about the role of horror stories in our cultural imagination, asking what pleasure we can take in tales of plague, and what we can learn from Poe’s gothic fiction – as well as casting her sharp eye to life after pandemic.”

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/15/margaret-atwood-showcase-gothic-puppet-show-mary-beard-bbc?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_b-gdnnews&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1586979666

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