Published by The Puddin’head Press
Stapled Chapbook, 23 pages
5.5 x 8.5 inches, 2010
$6.00
Fall From Grace offers the extended monologue, and fundamental change of perception,
of a successful architect and failed husband-father-grandfather, having repelled his wife
and children by his own unyielding nature, shown through his musings on the modernist
and reductionary tents that he has adhered to since his youth.
Praise for Fall From Grace
…thoughtful…emotionally charged. – Jae-Ha Kim – The Chicago Sun Times
Fall From Grace is a powerful symbolic statement of protest. It represents a sort of blank verse, poetic/prophetic indictment of the shallow, rootless banality of current culture. The form chosen happens to be architectural, but the scope is far wider. Minimalism infected a multitude of fields, including literary criticism, where it was seriously argued that one could fully understand Shakespeare with no knowledge of Elizabethan England! “Connectedness is dead!” It was Santayana who observed that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it, and the failure to understand and appreciate our past is everywhere appallingly evident. The malady is widespread but all too rarely recognized, let alone seriously addressed therapeutically. It is the virtue of this play that it does spotlight the bacillus and display it in all its ugliness, though no remedial prescription is offered, except by implication. The protagonist here, though symbolic of Prometheus at one level, discovers that his “gift” to man is of dubious value, which only adds to his pain. He finds solace in a wry humor and a return to basics: he will take his grandson to the zoo. But his hubris endures in his last word – he will “wire his room with constellations to light the night.” He lives in hope that he still may bring light into a darkling world. And the reader/viewer shares in that hope. – William Graham Cole, Ph.D. – Author of The Restless Quest of Modern Man
Helgeson… understands the late 20th Century – Allan Bates Ph. D.
About the Author
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeff Helgeson is the author of a novel titled Thresholds, as well as numerous plays which have been produced in Chicago, Milwaukee, St Louis, and New York.
He has served as the drama awards chairman for The Society of Mid-Land Authors and was a founding member of The Chicago Alliance of Playwrights, as well as both The Boxer Rebellion Ensemble Theatre and The Backstage Theatre Company. A graduate of The University of Chicago, he has taught at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College, Robert Morris College, and Roosevelt University, where he has also been a program administrator for several years, in addition to having served as the administrative advisor to the award winning literary magazine, The Oyez Review. He has also been active in the National Poetry Slam movement, having published Poetry Slam founder Marc Smith’s first volume of verse, Crowdpleaser and helped to produce two National Poetry Slam Competitions.
Additionally, he has appeared in several theatrical productions, and he has regularly contributed to the Chicago visual arts community, working to organize a number of exhibitions, as well as writing “The Closer Look” column for the publication of The Chicago Artists Coalition.
Also by Jeff Helgeson: Fiction: Thresholds, 1999, Drama: Sign Of The Times, 2010
Excerpt
Spoken: This universe is enough…
Voice Over: …Big Bang to the present, thirteen point six billion years. Matter without end.
Spoken: Amen!
Voice Over: Oscillation as infinite flux.
Spoken: Heroclitus validated by Einstein.
Voice Over: Matter and energy omnipotent.
Spoken: Self-existent…
Voice Over: …self-active…
Spoken: …self-developing…
Voice Over: …self-enduring…
Spoken: …self-evident. (pause) Without first cause.
Voice Over: Eternal
Spoken: Let them use Beatles music to sell running shoes and Beethoven’s only ballet score to sell soap. Enrich the environment of the present with reference to the past as a way to fuel the future with possibility. (pause) Bring the museums out into the streets, and reproduce the images they contain for utilitarian needs. (pause) Support Jacques d’Amoise, with regards to Balachine and Diaghelev, so that Barishnikov can take care of himself. Paint “The Winged Victory of Samothrace” on racing automobiles, and use the Mona Lisa to market “La Gioconda Condoms” to women in the fight against AIDS and Leonardo’s “Study of Man” to sell sun-screen against the erosion of the ozone layer. (pause) Package fast food and groceries in wrappers by Kandinsky, Klee, Mondrian, Pollack, de Kooning, and van Gogh. (pause) Protest the nuclear threat to the existence of all this richness with signs bearing “The Cry” by Munch and Picasso’s “Guernica.” Popularize everything, from “The Venus of Laussel” to Dada, and Christo, and “anti-art.”
(He leans forward in the chair and continues in a conversational manner.)
Spoken: Offer The Iliad of Homer as a made-for-TV-movie-mini-series, featuring Sylvester Stallone as Achilles and… Sean Penn, as his “friend”, Patrocles.
Pause.
Spoken (leaning back in the chair): Gloria Steinem had the right idea: recruit through association. Suddenly, Marilyn Monroe, Dolly Parton, and Madonna all became “feminist icons,” and they brought their worshipers with them.
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