The Escape Artist


A solo performance work with spoken text, songs and video. 


     While rehearsing a performance work based on the life of the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio, a stressed-out performer has a catastrophic trapeze accident.  While stranded on a gurney in a hospital emergency room for 15 hours with a broken neck (‘Alice in Wonderland’ meets ‘The Matrix’), he escapes the catastrophic reality by finding refuge in the images that flood his mind--the sinners and saints, the prostitutes and gods--that populate Caravaggio’s paintings.


     ‘The Escape Artist’ contains an extensive spoken text interspersed with 7 Original Songs (by John Kelly & Carol Lipnik), as well as 2 ‘covers’ (a James Bond theme song and an aria from an opera by Monteverdi); pre-recorded music accompaniment of these songs is the soundtrack for sections of projected Video, and are sung live by Kelly.  In the final song of ‘The Escape Artist’ he accompanies himself on electric guitar.


A projected video component is integrated as a crucial aspect of the performance; there are 3 projection screens are hung directly behind and above the table/bed.  As the performer spends most of the performance lying on the table/bed, there is a camera rigged directly above him that functions as a ‘live feed’, and projects his face in close-up onto the center screen, giving the audience more immediate access to him.  The flanking screens, and at times all 3 screens together show his points of view:

--what he literally sees (doctors, nurses, hospital ceiling)

--what he sees in the refuge of his imagination (the paintings of Caravaggio)


PREMIERE: Performance Space 122, NY, April 14-30, 2011 

               (Commissioned through 2010 Ethyl Eichelberger Award)

 

SONG LIST:


1.   The Dazzling Darkness   John Kelly/Carol Lipnik

  1. 2.  Cupid Song   John Kelly/Carol Lipnik

  2. 3.  Cara Viaggio   John Kelly/Carol Lipnik

  3. 4.  You Only Live Twice   John Barry

  4. 5.  Oblivion Soave   Claudio Monteverdi

  5. 6.  Profit Blues   John Kelly

  6. 7.  Out Of Body   John Kelly/Carol Lipnik

  7. 8.  All That’s Left   John Kelly/Carol Lipnik

  8. 9. The Escape Artist    John Kelly

 
 
Comments Widget