On Tuesday, February 25 at noon,
storyteller and author Andy Fraenkel will be at Lunch With Books at the Ohio
County Public Library in Wheeling to discuss his book, Mahabharata: The
Eternal Quest, based on the great
Indian epic. Creating the book has been a lifelong journey for Fraenkel.
While attending the City University of New
York, Fraenkel spent a lot of time in the college library, where he discovered
an old book, The Indian Story
Book (1914) by Richard Wilson, about India’s ancient stories, which
included some from the epic, Mahabharata. The book jumped out at
him–an old collectable that started him on a journey that he continues to
this day. Fraenkel, majoring in Theater, turned one of the Mahabharata stories into a one-act play.
His theater class decided to use his piece as one of four plays they performed
for elementary schools on Staten Island.
After graduating in 1970, Fraenkel
left New York and over the years was involved with several regional theater
groups, including the long-lived Broom Street Theater in Madison, WI. In
the early 1980s, he formed his own group, the Theater of Understanding,
and staged stories from world cultures. Eventually, Fraenkel made several trips
to India, which helped shape a full-length, two-man Mahabharata drama that appeared Off Broadway in
1987 at the American Theater of Actors in Manhattan.
After suffering a heart attack, Fraenkel
transitioned to dramatic storytelling, became a member of the National
Storytelling Network, and began offering multicultural storytelling programs
and workshops in schools, colleges, libraries, museums, and special events. He
was to receive a West Virginia Artist Fellowship Award for his work.
Information about his professional programs is available online.
Now, with the recent publication of his
book, Mahabharata: The
Eternal Quest, Andy Fraenkel has come full circle since the time he first
discovered The Indian Story
Book. He had started working on his Mahabharata manuscript in 2000. He explains the
intent of his rendition was threefold, “to deliver the story as good
literature, to give it a cinematic slant, as potentially the basis for a film,
and to keep it at a length that could easily be studied in college classrooms.”
Since he doesn’t read Sanskrit, his
primary source was Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s monumental, first-ever, complete
English translation, completed in 1896 in 12 volumes. “Writing Mahabharata was like going on a journey,” says
Fraenkel. “Sometimes it was exhilarating. Sometimes it was discouraging. I
wondered if I could really pull it off successfully. I would stop writing for
months at a time and go on to other projects. Ever so gradually, the manuscript
came together. I tried to find the unique elements of each part of the story.
Over the years, writing Mahabharata has been a wonderful meditation
for me. An old Hindu monk in India told me, ‘Once you let the story into your
heart, it will never leave you’.”
To learn more about his book, visit the Mahabharata Project Website
at mahabharata-project.com. Lunch With Books programs are free and open to the
public. Patrons are invited to bring a bag lunch and complimentary beverages
are served. Call the library for more information at 304-232-0244 or visit
ohiocountylibrary.org.
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