BIG ART GROUP, NEW YORK is a trangressive performance company founded in 1998 by Caden Manson. The company was founded to aggressively attack the boundaries of theatre through experimentation with structure, medium and process: developing ridiculous, uninhibited and vicious new works. Shelf Life premiered at the Kraine Theatre in New York in March 2001. It marks the original incarnation of a form developed by Caden Manson and the company over the last two years called "Real Time Film". In "Real Time Film", the actors work in front of three stationary cameras, and what those cameras see is projected on a three-segment shoulder-high screen; the performers' heads, shoulders, feet and the projections of their actions are all that's visible.
Watching the screen, the audience sees a movie. Watching the performers, the audience sees the making of the movie. In Shelf Life, a live action movie unfurls on stage, a film in which the desperate James, Wendy, and Max, living in a pervasively disposable world, become obsessed with the alluring Frankie. Each tries to possess and mould her in the form of their own media-induced desires, even as she uses them as a means to her own consumptive ends. Fueled by jealousy, rage, and betrayal, this "love quadrangle" ignites into a bizarre and tragic struggle over the ownership of happiness. Big Art Group's play dives deep into our garbage-loving culture and tells a tender cinematic love story doomed to sour.
Performances: Shelf Life Space Upstairs, Project Friday 5th - Saturday 6th January, 8:30pm Admission: 17 / 12
Workshop: Saturday 11th January Space Upstairs Free Public Theatre Event: Saturday 11th January, 4pm Space Upstairs
SUPPORTED BY THE WESTIN, DUBLIN.