Counting Sheep
Opening Night: December 5, 2017
Closing: December 17, 2017
Theater: 3LD Art & Technology Center
After taking the 2016 Edinburgh Fringe and then the world by storm, COUNTING SHEEP, the groundbreaking and award-winning immersive guerrilla folk opera, has its New York premiere November 28th – December 17th at 3LD. (80 Greenwich St)
Sung entirely in breathtaking traditional Ukrainian polyphony and enhanced by first-hand video footage from the streets of Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine during the protests, Counting Sheep invites audience members to participate fully in this electrifying performance. Patrons are encouraged to dance, sing, eat, hurl foam bricks, dodge men with guns, witness violence, and join in the rituals of public mourning as part of a dramatized experience of the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine. The protests in Kyiv were fueled by disenchantment with the political system, and led to the deaths of over 780 people and the displacement of more than one million others.
Mark and Marichka Marczyk, the creators of Counting Sheep, were in the streets during the uprising, and they re-create their experience as part of the performance, addressing themes of national pride and human rights, and navigating the tipping point between street party and revolt.
All patrons participate in the immersive experience of the show. Seating is general admission within each section.
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December 5, 2017
In the middle of the Maidan revolution in Ukraine, on a city square in Kiev, someone handed me the lyrics to a song. A protester was playing it on an upright piano as couples danced and people sang along. The mood was high-spirited, though the lyrics, in Ukrainian, spoke of flaming tires and a government of criminals that wouldn’t be tolerated anymore.
This was “Counting Sheep,” billed as an “immersive guerrilla folk opera,” at 3LD Art and Technology Center. Presented by Hot Feat USA, it plunges audience members into the uprising, which lasted for a few months in late 2013 and early 2014, resulting in the ouster of Ukraine’s president. I don’t speak Ukrainian, though, and I couldn’t have been the only one there who looked at a sheet of lyrics I didn’t understand and declined to sing them. (Later, I asked the show’s publicist for a translation.) Isn’t knowing what you’re advocating a basic rule of rebellion?
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