After a catastrophic trapeze accident, a man escapes into the paintings of Caravaggio.
ABOUT
THE ESCAPE ARTIST is a solo autobiographical work based on this actual account: during a rehearsal for a performance about my obsession with the Italian painter Caravaggio, while attempting to utilize the dramatic power of aerial effects, I suffered a trapeze accident.
The events leading up to the accident take the form of a spoken conversation with the audience. But once the moment of impact occurs, resulting in a broken neck, lay still on the table, a narrative necessity representing lying stabilized in a neck brace in an emergency room. It also functioned as an endurance work, as I lay motionless for an hour, speaking the monologue and singing nine songs, in tandem with the extensive three-channel video projections, which also including a live-feed from above onto my face, below.
PRODUCTION DETAILS
Text, lyrics, video design by John Kelly
Video co-design/director of photography/editing by Jeff Morey
co-direction/dramaturgy by Dudley Saunders
music by Carol Lipnik, John Barry, Claudio Monteverdi, John Kelly
arrangements, piano, accordion, flute by John DiPinto
cello by Nioka Workman
violin by Justin Smith
additional vocals by Carol Lipnik
lighting design by Eileen Goddard
Developed at The Sundance Theatre Institute at Mass MoCA.
With: John Kelly
Performers on video: Matt Connolly, Jeremy Gender, Agosto Machado, Claire Moodey, Matt Nassar, Brandon Olson, Ethan Shoshan.
Premiere: Performance Space 122, NY, April 2011.