The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presents a screening of Reza Abdoh’s Father was a Peculiar Man livestreaming on the worldwide, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV community on Thursday 11 May 2023 at 3:30 p.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 5:30 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 6:30 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).
Join us for a screening of Reza Abdoh’s extraordinary, site-specific work Father was a Peculiar Man, an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov staged in New York City’s meat packing district in the summertime of 1990. Produced by Annie Hamburger’s En Garde Arts, Father was a Peculiar Man confirmed how brilliantly Abdoh utilized his particular site-based strategy that he developed in Los Angeles to New York City’s city infrastructure. One of the objectives of En Garde Arts’s site-specific journeys via New York’ meat packing neighborhood was to make use of the native structure as a theatrical set whereas on the similar time evoking and taking part in with the historical past of the place. The half-deserted cobblestone streets south of Chelsea enhanced the play’s Nineteenth-century references. The neighborhood’s previous as each a meat-packing and a transportation hub by way of the highline trains in addition to a former middle for after-hours intercourse golf equipment merge as good background for Abdoh’s spectacular tableaus of gluttony and lust.
Stephen Holden wrote in his 1990 New York Times evaluation: “Theatergoers in search of finely polished drama should be warned about the crudeness of the production. In scenes where the characters speak through microphones, it is sometimes hard to discern the dialogue or even to tell who is speaking. And there are moments when the simultaneous jamming together of so many images and ideas seems more confusing than stimulating. What is finally so winning about the show, which plays through July 21, is its sheer vitality. The performances are as large and passionate as the audacity of the conception. And the surrealistic costumes and design make the audience participants in a literary and historical carnival out of Alice in Wonderland” Surprisingly light-hearted regardless of its darker components, it’s nice enjoyable.”
Tony Torn’s sensible split-screen reconstruction of misplaced video footage creates a right away immersive perception in one of many best out of doors performances in experimental theatre within the twentieth century.
With Tony Torn and members of the unique forged. Moderated by Frank Hentschker. The authentic screening came about at The Anthology Film Archives in New York City early 2023.
Tony Torn: Recent Theater: Mud/Drowning (D: Joanne Akalaitis), Dom Juan (D: Ashley Tata), Spider Rabbit ( D: Dan Safer), Superterranean (D: Dan Rothenberg), Paul Swan Is Dead And Gone ( D: Steve Cosson). Tony is thought for working extensively with experimental theater makers Reza Abdoh and Richard Foreman, because the founding director for Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, taking part in Rusty Trawler in Breakfast at Tiffany’s on Broadway reverse Emilia Clark, and creating and starring in Ubu Sings Ubu with Dan Safer. He manages Torn Page, a personal occasion house named in honor of his mother and father Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.