About the Show

This absurdist work about a chorus of students trying trying like the devil to tell a simple story offers an examination of the post-9/11 world. Part of the Flea's "Mac Wellman: Perfect Catastrophes" series.

From the show:

A STUDENT. A CHORUS. A WAR.

A chorus of students, all alike and all unalike, are trying like the devil to tell a simple story—perhaps the story about the tragedy of the Sandwich Man, with sandwich boards upon which nothing is written, and hence, say nothing. The Invention of Tragedy is Wellman’s examination of the post-9/11 world and America’s general and genial acceptance of the Iraq war.

Critic Reviews (6)

"In ‘Invention of Tragedy,’ Wordplay Over Plotlines: Mac Wellman’s ode to theater does away with character and basic grammar. Here, language baffles and delights."
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"Mac Wellman's mini-masterpiece 'THE INVENTION OF TRAGEDY' at The Flea Theater"
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"Seeing 'The Invention of Tragedy,' certain names went through my head, such as John Ashbery and Edith Sitwell, poets who preferred the sounds of words over their meanings; it's certainly an approach, although whether it really works in a theatrical setting is debatable."
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"On a school auditorium’s stage, young adults portray children as they perform Mac Wellman’s abstract fantasia with slight political overtones. Devotees of his idiosyncratic style may be enchanted while anyone else could be baffled. Brevity, playfulness and presentational polish are its virtues."
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"The piece, at first, dives head first into the idea of group dynamics, when the whole follows aggressively behind the central talking-head, like a pack of nervous dogs repeating Fox News talking points."
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"There are three ways of looking at 'The Invention of Tragedy' that offer some satisfactions - as a political parable, as a metaphor for Western theater, or as entertaining nonsense full of such surface pleasures as colorful design, pleasing music and an appealing cast."
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Cast and creative team