In Context: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Photo: Fiona Shaw, courtesy of Phyllida Lloyd

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner runs at BAM through December 22. Context is everything, so get even closer to Coleridge's famous ill-fated ocean voyage, the amazing Fiona Shaw, and more with this curated selection of articles, videos, and original blog pieces related to the show. For those of you who've already seen it, help us keep the conversation going by telling us what you thought below.

Fiona Shaw Reads Eliot, Yeats, and Patti Smith

by Robert Wood


For those of you who think that poetry is better read than heard, or that our age is too cynical for public recitations of rhymed verse, or that those who feel differently must sleep in a beret and with a copy of Ginberg’s “Howl” under their pillow, we offer you… Fiona Shaw, coming to BAM next week to perform Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ("Water, water, everywhere," etc.).

Fans of Harry Potter will know her as the irascible Aunt Petunia Dursley. Fans of searching for meaning in a godless world will know her as Winnie, the woman buried up to her neck in mud from Beckett’s Happy Days (BAM 2008 Winter/Spring Season). All should know her as one of the most commanding actors they're likely to see on a New York stage.

Here, get to know her as sufferer of the cruelest month in Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” the laboring lover-poet in Yeats’ “Adam’s Curse,” the heartbroken wailer of Patti Smith’s “Wilderness,” and the celestial dreamer in Yeat's "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.”

1. “The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot