The Stubborn Illusion of Time
Created for The Brick's Film Festival: A Theatre Festival
Williamsburg, New York, June & July 2008
The Stubborn Illusion of Time is a sequel to The Immediate Present - created for The Brick Theater's The Film Festival: A Theater Festival. Using video footage from The Immediate Present in various formats on stage, the piece investigated aspects of film - repeat, slow motion, still frame - and applied them to theatre.
Four of the characters remained - an East German janitor, a Belarussian homeless man, a dead photographer, and a girl who had died at seven in her parents' coffin factory and never been able to live... the piece traces her attempts to escape this strange and haunting world in which the lives of current and former inhabitants of the factory endlessly repeat.
Devised by & Featuring Brian Farish, Laura Jensen, Erhard Schöeffmann, Maggie Surovell
Conceived & Directed by Anna G. Jones, Laura Jensen (associate director)
Dramaturg Roweena Mackay
Sound Designer Sharath Patel
Lighting Designer Burke Brown
Costume Designer Lia Cinquegrano
Video by David Dixon, Ryan Fenson-Hood, Jahil Maplestone (editor), Martin Verigin
Producers Laura Jensen, Anna G. Jones and company members
Presented by The Brick as part of The Film Festival: A Theater Festival (run extended)
Supported by Individual Donors
Reviews
"The Stubborn Illusion of Time, a free-floating movement play at the innovative Brick Theater in Williamsburg, brings together an ensemble of four actors, who weave together macabre, eerie scenes in a tapestry of evocative moods... Artfully directed by Anna Jones, the repetition of various scenes on scrims and on two TVs give Illusion a sense of circuitous storytelling, acting and re-enacting life's parts - like a scary loop - And the characters bring to the stage a dark, chaotic, and foreboding aura."
Jo Ann Rosen, www.nytheatre.com
"Two pieces in particular are worth checking out [at The Brick's Film Festival: A Theater Festival] ... The second piece is Bone Orchard's The Stubborn Illusion of Time. It's primarily a visual piece whose power is in its ability to evoke emotion and tension, and one of the major hurdles the show manages to overcome is the difficulty of getting the film/video production values up to the standards of the performance - one of the primary challenges for most theater, that makes use of moving pictures."
Alex Clements, L Magazine
"Bone Orchard...pick of The Brick's Film/Theatre Festival, 2008"
Jason Zinoman, New York Times