Gertrude Stein was a genius. A genius. A genius. A genius. Although generally (and rather condescendingly) remembered for investing in modernist art, she in fact helped invent the thing—doing as much as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, or spare-voiced Ernest Hemingway to subvert the sacred conventions of English prosody. In the manner of Matisse and Cezanne, Stein flattened out the literary canvas to draw our attention to its raw constituent elements: words, sounds, rhythms. In the manner of Picasso and the cubists, she disrupted the flow of familiar narratives to render them rare and strange again.
Still, there’s a risk in using an artist’s art to tell her story, which is that you’ll end up subsuming the art in the story. The risk is especially great when it comes to Stein, inasmuch as her writing is so defiantly, so notoriously impenetrable: we may seize on the clean, clear conventions of romance as a welcome relief from avant-garde rigor. She’s not so hard to understand, we may tell ourselves. Just a woman in love.
Through 8/30: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM Theater Wit 1229 W. Belmont 773-975-8150kokandyproductions.com $38
