The Escape Artist

Opening Night: April 15, 2011
Closing: April 30, 2011
Theater: P.S. 122

While rehearsing a theater piece based on the life of the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio, a stressed-out performer has a catastrophic trapeze accident. While stranded on a gurney in a hospital emergency room for 15 hours with a broken neck (Alice in Wonderland meets The Matrix), he escapes and finds refuge in the images that flood his mind–the sinners and saints, the prostitutes and gods–that populate Caravaggio’s paintings. The Escape Artist contains Spoken Text interspersed with renditions 10 Original Songs (by John Kelly & Carol Lipnik), as well as 2 ‘covers’ (a James Bond theme song and an aria from an opera by Monteverdi); pre-recorded music accompaniment of these songs is the soundtrack for sections of projected Video, and are sung live by Kelly. In the final song of The Escape Artist he accompanies himself on electric guitar.