La MaMa E.T.C in association with Talking Band presents
THE ROOM SINGS
Written and Directed by Paul Zimet
Music by Ellen Maddow
Set and video design by Nic Ularu
Lighting Design by Lenore Doxsee
Costume Design by Kiki Smith
Puppet Design by Ralph Lee
March 31 – April 16, 2017
at The Ellen Stewart Theater, 66 E. 4th Street.
A room in a country house sings of those who have lived there over a span of seventy years. Performed with striking theatricality by OBIE award winning Talking Band using an array of genres – 40’s Noir, Chinese Ghost Tale, Chekhovian Farce/Tragedy, and a Sicilian Puppet Opera sung by beavers – their stories intertwine and illumine each other.
The audience sees a multiple, fractured view of a place. We see the view through the room’s windows – a side porch, a lawn, a flower garden with a rose arbor, a pond with a dock – and the people who inhabit these settings. As the play unfolds, one setting comes into the foreground as another recedes. The scenes move on rolling platforms so we them not only from different distances but from different angles as well, and soon we comes to realize that we are seeing the characters not only from different points of view but also at different moments in time.