The online immersive Luna Eclipse takes the audience through an Upper West Side church and back to the fourteenth century
spit&vigor
The Center at West Park
November 4-8, livestream, $20, 8:00
Prerecorded encores through December 13, $15
www.spitnvigor.com
In May 2018, I saw Linked Dance Theatre’s immersive production Beloved/Departed, which led the audience through virtually every nook and cranny at the West Park Presbyterian Church on Eighty-Sixth St. Now New York City’s spit&vigor company is taking audiences virtually through the church with Luna Eclipse, performed live nightly through November 8, after which you will be able to watch a recorded version on demand through December 13. The ninety-minute show is written and directed by artistic director Sara Fellini, who also has the lead role as Princeton professor Aine Luna, a thirty-something woman embroiled in a creepy mystery that takes her back to the fourteenth century. Early on she explains, “I have a doctorate in phenology, and a special interest in the study of paleobotany, which is the study of life that has come before us — through fossil records and the like. Frankly, and quite bluntly, they tell me that I have lost my mind.”
As the camera travels around the cool spaces, each room with its own unique character, we are introduced to witch Maurice (troupe executive producer Adam Belvo), dancer and activist Babs Lockhart (Caitlin Murphy), Tarot card reader Ida Lunigiana (Christine Kim), nun Sofonisba (Kim), warrior Roland (Nicole Orabona), woman from the past Louisa DeMarco (Clara Kundin), ailing father and husband Lee Doherty (Eamon Murphy), the fortysomething Rebecca Luna (Becca Musser), her overdressed son, Joseph (Pete Oliver), student Heloisia de Lunigiana (Xandra Leigh Parker), an Orange (Kundin), and a serial killer known as the Axeman of New Orleans (Nicholas Thomas). The play is built around ruminations, a series of set pieces that Aine explains “could be an imagined argument, or an internal monologue, or one side of a meaningful conversation. They aren’t necessarily true or real, but they are how the person remembered and ruminated upon them. It’s their perspective.” She also quotes from T. S. Elliot’s “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock” and shares a story about a canary that is based on actual events experienced by puppeteer Pandora Gastelum. Luna Eclipse is part of spit&vigor’s residency with the Center at West Park; you can also watch the company’s prepandemic production of The Brutes, written by Casey Wimpee, directed by Fellini, and recorded at the historic Players Club, about a performance of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that featured brothers Edwin, Junius Jr. and John Wilkes Booth, here.