Quarry (1978)
88 min
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.
- Release date
- August 8, 1978
- Country of origin
- United States
Cast
- Meredith Monk as Child
- Ping Chong as The Dictator
- Steve Clorfeine as Dictator's Aide
- Tone Blevins as Old Testament woman
- Tone Blevins as Dictator
- Daniel Ira Sverdlik as Old Testament man
- Daniel Ira Sverdlik as Dictator
- Lanny Harrison as Radio Singer
- Lanny Harrison as Announcer
- Lanny Harrison as Woman in a flowered dress
- Monica Moseley as Woman at a table
- Monica Moseley as Dictator
- Pablo Vela as Man with grey hair
- Pablo Vela as Dictator
- Lee Nagrin as Woman with Gray Hair
- Mary Shultz as Woman at Table
Crew
- Amram Nowak · Director
- Meredith Monk · Director
- Meredith Monk · Writer
- Peter Sciscioli · Producer
- Meredith Monk · Composer
- David Lerner · Cinematographer
- Jerry Pantzer · Cinematographer
- Adam Bernardi · Editor
- Bob Rosen · Editor
- Ping Chong · Production designer
- Jean-Claude Ribes · Production designer