16
Apr/19

ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: LINK LINK CIRCUS

16
Apr/19
(photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Isabella Rossellini returns as ringmaster in Link Link Circus at Hunter College (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Hunter College
The Frederick Loewe Theatre
930 Lexington Ave. at 68th St.
April 18 – May 3, students $10-$15, adults $37-$42
www.huntertheaterproject.org
hunter.cuny.edu

“Everything that I study at school — that is very serious — I try to visualize and make it fun,” says Isabella Rossellini. The sixty-six-year-old daughter of neo-Realist Roberto Rossellini and Oscar-, Emmy-, and Tony-winning Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman is currently working on her master’s degree in animal behavior and conservation at Hunter College, where she will stage her unique one-woman, one-dog show Link Link Circus at the Frederick Loewe Theatre from April 18 to May 3 as part of Gregory Mosher’s Hunter Theater Project. The seventy-five-minute multimedia presentation, which made its US premiere last year at the Bayshnikov Arts Center, looks to be nothing if not fun. The model and star of such films as Blue Velvet and Death Becomes Her and such TV movies and series as Crime of the Century and Alias has an affinity for animals, as displayed in her Sundance program Green Porno, which playfully explored the mating rituals of animals and the environmental protection of marine life. Rossellini is also the author of My Chickens and I, an illustrated book about chickens, and runs an organic farm in Bellport, where she lives. In Link Link Circus, she serves as a ringmaster while also transforming into such scientific figures as Aristotle, Descartes, B. F. Skinner, and Charles Darwin as she delves into the nature of animal intelligence. The set design is by Rick Gilbert and Andy Byers, with puppetry by Schuyler Beeman, animation by Andy Smetanka and Courtney Pure, costumes by Byers and Fanny Karst, music by Byers, and all-important props by Gina Freedman; Rossellini codirects with Guido Torlonia. The Hunter Theater Project, which began last year with Richard Nelson’s adaptation of Uncle Vanya, is a low-price, high-quality initiative that connects the artists and the audience and makes theater more affordable for all.