A husband and spouse stand beside one another on an unlimited, empty stage. They’re shut sufficient to the touch. But an impassable gulf separates the 2.
Blind Runner, a gently shifting new piece now at St. Ann’s Warehouse by means of January 24 (as a part of Below the Radar), makes use of stay video components to drive that distance residence. Intense close-ups of the 2 performers’ faces are projected onto the again wall, looming massive over their small our bodies within the Warehouse house. Nothing fancier is required—the actors’ expressions, full of ache and determined longing, do all of the work.
Runner is one in every of a number of works in New York’s jam-packed January pageant season to lean closely on stay video components and new applied sciences. Some items, like Runner, tie in these tech components seamlessly with the storytelling, whereas others deploy these instruments extra awkwardly—or, in additional unlucky circumstances, distract from their narrative objectives with useless use of synthetic intelligence.
Runner makes use of video with clear objective. Created by Mehr Theatre Group and carried out in Farsi, Amir Reza Koohestani’s play follows an Iranian man’s weekly visits to his spouse, a political prisoner held in Tehran. Koohestani’s invasive close-ups (he additionally directs; video is by Yasi Moradi & Benjamin Krieg) spotlight not solely the couple’s growing detachment, but additionally the day by day suffocation of life in a surveillance state. When the couple jogs aspect by aspect in a later scene, their our bodies blur collectively on display like ghosts passing by means of one another, a easy however stirring impact.
Runner finally will get slowed down in melodrama—the husband is pulled into an advanced new relationship that provides intimacy his spouse can not present. The dialogue turns into round, usually repetitive. However restrained work by performers Ainaz Azarhoush and Mohammad Reza Hosseinzadeh retains the piece grounded, whereas the usage of video all the time enhances its liveness.
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Again in 2020, when Sinking Ship & Theatre in Quarantine first offered The seventh Voyage of Egon Tichy as a web-based work, I questioned the piece’s “liveness.” Writing for Exeunt, I moaned: “Apparently components of seventh Voyage have been in reality stay, however I wouldn’t have recognized that until you informed me.”
My uncertainty grew out of the present’s premise, which noticed house traveler Egon Tichy (Joshua William Gelb) falling right into a time vortex and confronting a number of variations of himself. Josh Luxenberg’s script for the dizzying sci-fi farce is sharp and witty, however in its on-line type, it was arduous to say which components have been exactly “stay,” and a few influence was misplaced.
The play’s in-person debut, The seventh Voyage of Egon Tichy [Redux] (at New York Theatre Workshop’s Fourth Avenue Theatre by means of February 2, additionally as a part of UTR) appears to exist as a direct response to that exact criticism. On two large screens, the present performs out simply because it did on-line, save for some tweaks. However on the middle of all of it is Gelb, within the flesh, hurling himself round that notorious TiQ closet as a number of Tichys.
It’s nice enjoyable to look at, even when Luxenberg’s script nonetheless sags in its center part. The best delight right here is watching Gelb work his magic by means of 100 or so seamless scene adjustments. As with the stay Circle Jerk on the Connelly in 2022, you get each the present itself and all of its internal workings—two voyages for the value of 1.
Much less profitable at tying collectively story and tech is kanishk pandey’s PRISONCORE!, a part of The Exponential Festival. (Full context— I noticed the present on an evening when pandey himself, admirably, stepped into the lead on-book as a consequence of solid sickness.) This multimedia piece, directed by Rachel Gita Karp and offered at The Brick, begins because the story of a sadistic jail guard named Fortunate. Within the title of “reform,” Fortunate forces his inmates (the viewers) to help his on-line playing efforts. After his livestream vendor Rain turns into implicated in Fortunate’s merciless antics, the story shifts and turns into hers.
Fortunate’s interactions with Rain’s livestream are seamless from a technical standpoint. And definitely pandley’s concepts across the inhumanity of life behind a display, and the non-public jail of a life lived completely on-line, are well timed. However his central idea of an online-gaming based mostly jail reform program—nevertheless actually we’re speculated to take that—is simply too half-formed and foolish for any of those concepts to actually acquire efficiency.
Within the moments the place PRISONCORE! makes (minimal) use of AI imagery, the know-how is hardly offered as a boon. New multi-part digital venture TECHNE, then again, locations generative AI at its core. Within the two TECHNE displays I noticed at BAM Fisher (out of 4 whole), the place TECHNE runs by means of January 29 as a part of UTR, the outcomes of embracing AI weren’t encouraging.
Most pointless was “The Vivid Unknown,” a recreation of Godfrey Reggio’s legendary documentary Koyaanisqatsi generated totally by means of AI. The entire worth of Reggio’s authentic movie, in fact, was the painstaking effort of amassing and stitching collectively hours of time lapse footage filmed throughout the nation. Dumping all that into an AI generator merely produces a far uglier trendy imitation of an awesome work.
Extra profitable was “Voices,” Margarita Athanasiou’s witty video essay tracing the historical past of mediums and spiritualism in America. This piece’s use of AI imagery was additionally distracting (and, once more, ugly). However when the essay focuses on her grandmother’s obsession with mediums, tying residence film footage in with a historic tapestry, Athanasiou finds—a lot asthe creators of Runner and Tichy did—that wealthy, intriguing collision level of know-how and storytelling.
Blind Runner continues at St. Ann’s Warehouse by means of January 24. The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy [Redux] continues at Fourth Avenue Theatre by means of Feb 2. TECHNE continues at BAM Fisher by means of January 19. PRISONCORE! has concluded its run.