The New Stage Theatre Co. to Present ELECTRONIC CITY

Have you ever imagined your life as animation? How about a horror movie, or maybe an ultra-modern romance?

The New Stage Theatre Co.'s premier of Electronic City at Theater for the New City gives us a glimpse of present-day life as everything from animation to horror. Using massive projections, the show creates a hybrid of animation, dance, dialogue, art, and theater conjuring the reality of the digital age.

Presented by Theater for the New City and the New Stage Co., an award-winning theater group, the production, which runs March 18 to April 3, is not just a show, but a new way of seeing the world.

Seven performers interact with projections on a 30-foot wide, 18-foot high screen, turning the venue into a fluid world.

"The projection is another character," Ildiko Nemeth, who directs and designed the production, said. "The narrative is flowing between the stage and the projection."

The story follows a man and woman, Tom and Joy, whose life stories are pieced together from fragmentary electronic images and messages.

"It is a romance in a digital era when we have this hyper-dependence on communication and high speed travel," Nemeth added. "People try to find connections with each other and meaning for their lives."

The hour-and-fifteen-minute-long journey, during which Tom and Joy seek to find their way back to each other, is set against a background of images and texts that flow like waterfalls of words.

"In my work, movement, projection, music and dance work together to create a whole," said Nemeth, New Stage founder and artistic director.

The company has won attention for creating visual spectacles that turn the physical space of theater into an immersive space where audiences may feel they have been submerged in on-screen action.

New Stage is the recipient of the 2015 Outstanding Performance Art Production Award from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards. Backstage has described it as a "daring downtown experimental group" with a flair for the dramatically and visually surreal.

The Innovative Theatre Awards cited the company's 10th anniversary as a "story of the year" in 2012, singling out its "unique brand of sophisticated, inspired and startling stage craft."

The show's creative team includes lighting designer Federico Restrepo, costume designer Brandon Lee Olson, projection designer Eric Marciano in collaboration with Nemeth, visual artist Chris Sharp, and production technical engineer Alex Santullo.

The cast includes Beth Dodye Bass, Dana Boll, Adam Boncz, Kaylin Lee Clinton, Sofia O.C., Brandon Lee Olson and Chris Tanner.

Performances are at Theater for the New City, 155 1st Avenue, between 9th and 10th Streets. The show runs Thursdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15 and $18 and can be purchased online by clicking on this Tix. link, at www.SmartTix.com or by calling 212-868-4444.

The theater is accessible from the L train to 1st Ave., F to 2nd Ave., N, R to 8th St., or 6 to Astor Place. For more information, visit www.newstagetheatre.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.