BEOWULF takes on the LES January 10, 2010

After a successful smash-hit run last April at Abrons Arts Center, Banana Bag & Bodice brings their award-winning epic SongPlay back to some of the Lower East Side’s most exciting and prestigious music venues. Digging into the roots of the original epic poem, this re-imagined version of Beowulf – A Thousand Years of Baggage hearkens back to the raw and rowdy style of storytelling in the old Scandinavian mead halls – with a passion for fierce poetry and a pint of thick beer.

Monsters and professors collide in blood-soaked Scandinavia as this hefty poem is rescued from 1,000 years of analysis and transformed into a defiantly raucous dissertation on art and violence. With an 8-piece band including dueling trombones, bass clarinet, accordion and saw, Beowulf combines Weillian cabaret, 40's jazz harmony, indie rock, punk, electronica and Romantic lieder into a cacophonous swirl. The award winning Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage is written by Jason Craig with music by 2009 Larson Award Winner Dave Malloy, and co-directed by Rod Hipskind and Mallory Catlett.