The Law of Remains
The Law of Remains is a 1991 American
filmmaker Reza Abdoh.[1] The play, initially staged in a New York City hotel, was described in A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama as "an apocalyptic fantasia".[2] In its 1992 review, The New York Times characterized it as "one of the angriest theater pieces ever hurled at a New York audience".[3]
The seven-scene play focuses on violence and its social impacts, through the use of
AIDS crisis".[3] Anita Durst, an actress and disciple of Abdoh who procured the location, summarized the play as "Andy Warhol and Jeffrey Dahmer meet in Heaven".[4] The play is a non-linear multi-media presentation, adding to traditional dramatic structure a soundtrack of "death, sex and violence" and "raucous" imagery, both live and electronic.[5]
According to theater scholar Jordan Schildcrout, "Abdoh's assaultive use of loud noises and bloody images outside a traditional theater space is very much in line with
Artaud's notions of a 'theater of cruelty,' intended to shock and provoke the audience. In this way, Abdoh uses a form of theatricality that does not offer enlightenment or catharsis but rather demands that the audience experience the brutality of Dahmer's crimes on a physical and visceral level."[6]
Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts' undergraduate senior theatre thesis group staged a reinterpretation of The Law of Remains in May 2011 at La Mama E.T.C in New York City.
References
- doi:10.2307/3245681.
- ISBN 1-4051-1088-0.
- ^ New York Times Company. Retrieved February 27, 2008.
- ^ Traub, James (October 6, 2002). "The Dursts have odd properties". The New York Times. New York City: The New York Times Company. Retrieved February 27, 2008.
- ISBN 0-521-47204-0.
- ISBN 9780472072323.