A Theatrical Production of
A BEAUTIFUL HELL
|
Presented by Theatre B
This play is based on a collection of poems by Fargo writer and grief counselor, Carol Kapaun Ratchenski. 'Nothing stops time and its losses,' these poems attest. A BEAUTIFUL HELL narrates the terrible journey into the profound maw of grief one who has experienced great loss must traverse. Told from a distance of years, the poems do 'laps around the cemetery years later,' documenting how close experience with death irrevocably marks and changes the ones who live through it. These poems rant and argue, they chant and console and cajole, they soothe and advise. A BEAUTIFUL HELL is a necessary handbook for anyone who is facing or has faced that unimaginable country—in other words, all of us. 'Music like cancer runs in our family,' one poem reports. Fortunately for us, in Carol Kapaun Ratchenski's devastating poems, the music always has the last say." —Debra Marquart |
About the Author |
Carol Kapaun Ratchenski began writing prose poetry in the 80's after reading Murder in the Dark by Maragret Atwood. The House on the Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros took her breath away. Ratchenski's first novel Mamababy, was published in 2013 as an e-book by Knuckledown Press. After losing her second son to cancer, she decided the best thing to do was to write about it. Ratchenski wants readers to see all the ways that life is horrible and wonderful all at the same time and how that can create something beautiful. She loved the idea of interconnecting poetry and prose together to create something similar to novel length.
