By Keith Waits for Arts-Louisville.com
August 4,2018
A mysterious forest populated by magical creatures, a tale told to a younger more innocent character; the idea of a fable for today demands the melding of iconic tropes to a contemporary sensibility.
Eli Keel’s Fabled Fragments is popping up once a month all around town, chapter by chapter. Of course, this doesn’t make for fully satisfying storytelling; it is not meant to. Each segment is presented as a tease of a full production scheduled for December at the Suspend Productions space on East Washington Street. So far the chapters have been presented in a studio or urban environments.
Chapter Three appeared on the Central Park stage before the August 3 performance of Louisville Ballet’s production of Roger Creel’s Tempest. The bucolic setting, with the magnificent three trees that frame the stage, is arguably the best location to date for the series, which imagines a forest landscape in which to play out the story.