Tickets for Third Rail Projects’ virtual, interactive Return the Moon go on sale August 6
Who: Third Rail Projects
What: Livestreamed interactive online production
Where: Third Rail Projects Zoom
When: August 11 – September 30, $15, $42, $67
Why: What is a company that specializes in site-specific immersive theater supposed to do during a pandemic lockdown? Brooklyn-based Third Rail Projects has come up with an answer: Return the Moon, a live, participatory Zoom presentation that begins previews August 11 for a September 8 opening. Conceived and directed by Zach Morris, the seventy-five-minute multimedia production explores remembrance and recurrence, featuring Alberto Denis, Joshua Gonzales, Justin Lynch, and Tara O’Con, with choreography by Marissa Nielsen-Pincus and the cast, sound and original music by Sean Hagerty, and visual design by Morris. “I was curious how we might create a ‘remote’ project that felt inviting and intuitive, communal and personal,” Bessie winner Morris said in a statement. “I wondered what inspiration might be found in this now ubiquitous platform that has become kind of an artifact and metaphor for the dissonance of distanced connection. I was interested in what it meant to craft a work specifically for this medium that would acknowledge and engage with its strengths, its all-too-familiar challenges, and also capitalize on the opportunities that it could afford that would be otherwise impossible in a traditional theater setting.”
Third Rail has previously taken adventurous audiences down the rabbit hole in a former parochial school in Then She Fell, behind the scenes at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater in Ghost Light, and to a beach resort in a Bushwick warehouse in The Grand Paradise. You experience Return the Moon from the confines of your own home and are encouraged, but not required, to participate in the shaping of the narrative, which deals with an old fable about the moon; in addition, afterward, you will receive a package in the mail continuing the exchange between audience and performer. Tickets go on sale August 6 but are limited to sixty per show, so act quick, because they are sure to go fast for this popular, innovative company. The standard price is $42, but you can pay it forward by contributing $67, with the difference helping subsidize $15 tickets for those who cannot afford more.