Film

Quarry

1978 · 1h 22m · Music · Drama

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.

Meredith Monk

Child

Ping Chong

The Dictator

Steve Clorfeine

Dictator's Aide

Tone Blevins

Old Testament woman / Dictator

Daniel Ira Sverdlik

Old Testament man / Dictator

Lanny Harrison

Radio Singer / Announcer / Woman in a flowered dress / Dictator

Monica Moseley

Woman at a table / Dictator

Pablo Vela

Man with grey hair / Dictator

Lee Nagrin

Woman with Gray Hair

Mary Shultz

Woman at Table

Gail Turner

Woman at a table

Anne Gentry

Visitor at the table

Coco Pekelis

Maid

Andrea Goodman

Organist

Steve Lockwood

Organist

• Meredith MonkWriter · Original Music Composer · Director
• Amram NowakDirector
• Peter SciscioliProducer
• Kirstin KapustikExecutive Producer
• Adam BernardiEditor
• Bob RosenEditor

Release date

August 8, 1978

Status

Released

Original language

English

Runtime

1h 22m

Genres

Music, Drama