The Frye presents a dramatic reading of Animal Farm featuring students from Holy Names Academy and O’Dea High School. Adapted by Nelson Bond from the book by George Orwell and directed by Next Stage Artistic Director Mark Jared Zufelt, this performance includes projected images from the Frye’s exhibition Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History.

 

George Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm (1945) satirizes totalitarian governments, specifically the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and the problems of trying to forge a utopian society. The story follows a group of barnyard animals that overthrow their oppressive owner and build a society in which “all animals are equal.” All is well until some of the animals begin to privilege themselves over their fellow creatures.

 

Applying this cautionary tale to the present, artists Tim Rollins and K.O.S. caricatured then-current political leaders such as right-wing North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Helms’ segregationist positions included opposition to the Civil Rights Act and an attempt to block the establishment of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. He also had a leading role in the charge against federal funding for the arts in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Tim Rollins and K.O.S.’s From the Animal Farm: Jesse Helms (after George Orwell) (1987) is on view in the Frye’s exhibition, and an image of the artwork will be projected during the dramatic reading of Animal Farm.

 

 

FREE admission and free parking in the Museum lot