House/Divided: From the Great Depression to the Great Recession
Photo Credit: James Gibbs
House/Divided at ArtsEmerson
House/Divided is a politically leftist work, part docudrama and part story, devised by the Builders Association, a long-term collaborative based in New York, which has toured worldwide. ArtsEmerson presented House/Divided at Boston’s Cutler Majestic from January 30 to February 2.
The intermedial production makes use of yesterday’s scrims and today’s screens as well as live and recorded music. Almost nothing has solidity, not even the house that is “built” at the production’s start and remains center stage in various iterations as a symbol of the events taking place.
House/Divided juxtaposes the Great Depression and the Great Recession. The 1930s scenes, with dialogue and narration drawn from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, focus on the Joads’ loss of their house and farmland, followed by their desperate journey from Oklahoma to California in the hope of finding work. …