VISION

“The poet is traditionally a blind man, but the Christian poet, and storyteller as well, is like the blind man whom Christ touched, who looked then and saw men as if they were trees, but walking. This is the beginning of vision.” —Flannery O’Connor

desired end-state

A renewed culture calls for a transformed art.

Our Live Cinema storytelling innovation will risk boldness to meet the moment—challenging the Theatre of the Absurd, nihilism, and dis-integration of the age and solving a unique problem, which is this: that scores of other movie producers are desperately trying to reinvent the wheel. But regardless of story, the basic form is the same. Ours is not.

To this cultural crisis we will bring, in editor J.D. McClatchy’s words, poetry’s unique ability to stir the emotions, to freeze the moment, to sweep the scene with a panoramic lens and suddenly swoop in for a close-up of suffering and courage.

In so doing, Manalive’s production of Death Comes for the War Poets—anchored in the Great War, which inaugurated the era of total war and the deployment of science for purposes of political manipulation, a tipping point in politics, economics, science, art, migration, and every aspect of life—will enlighten, elevate, and entertain, nourishing the soul to meet the universal spiritual hunger of humanity, manifest now more clearly than ever.