Director Jay Scheib is putting on a “live cinema performance” this month called Platonov, or The Disinherited. The performance consists of two parts: Platonov in the black box theater of New York City space The Kitchen, and the real-time cinema screening of the performance, called The Disinherited. Scheib has worked with his cast to operate cameras from the stage, live-directing the theatrical performance as it is broadcast to cinema screens throughout the city, from January 8 to 24.
One screening a week for three weeks—January 8, 15, and 22—will be free and open to the public. But you gotta get on the list, as those are the only free screenings. The free screenings go down in the Times Squares AMC Empire 25 Theater, thanks to the Times Square Arts Alliance.
The Disinherited is adapted from an unfinished Chekov play, Platanov, that was found in a lockbox following his death. Though he thought the work incomplete, when the play has been performed in full, it runs close to four hours. Scheib’s version runs at one hour and forty minutes.
Scheib is a multifaceted auteur of film, opera, stage, and screen, and a 2011-2012 Guggenhim Fellow. He describes The Disinherited as “a play about young men and women who could have just gone to bed and continued along in their semi-prosperous yet semi-boring lives, even happily—but instead stayed up and got more drunk and chose a destruction they knew somehow was coming anyway.” Sounds familiar.
Though those are the only three free screenings, the simulcast will be on silver screens throughout the city, including at the BAM Rose Cinema and on other dates at the Times Square AMC, for a price. The live performance of Platonov may also be viewedat The Kitchen, at a cost of $25 per ticket. Produced by ArKtype and Thomas O. Kriegsmann, the event stars Tony Torn, Sarita Choudhury, Rosalie Lowe, Mikéah Ernest Jennings, Jon Morris, Virginia Newcomb, Ayesha Jordan, and Laine Rettmer.
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[via Hyperallergic]
