this week in theater

QUEENS ROW

Nazira Hanna delivers the first of three monologues in Richard Maxwell’s Queens Row (photo © Paula Court)

The Kitchen
512 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Wednesday – Saturday through January 25, $20-$25
212-255-5793 ext11
thekitchen.org
www.nycplayers.org

Experimental theater master Richard Maxwell’s Queens Row is a poetic meditation on loneliness in a postapocalyptic world. Continuing at the Kitchen through January 25, the sixty-minute show takes place in the Chelsea institution’s empty upstairs gallery space, a black box with an exposed sink area and a small balcony. The play consists of three monologues delivered by a trio of nonprofessional actors, sharing their characters’ deeply personal stories surrounding a shooting death, each woman somewhat more physical and emotional than the one before. First up is a woman (mixed-media artist Nazira Hanna) in a Native American-style top who is from the fictional town of Queens Row, Massachusetts; she stands stock-still on a small circular platform carved right out of the floor and lifted slightly by blocks of wood. Her words are cold and direct, her body rigid, as she announces, “I am a woman who had a child. I don’t have a name. I don’t have ID, and I never did, if you can imagine. There is no record of my fingertips or my eyeballs. . . . I was born and no one could stop that from happening. I had a child, and no one could stop that from happening. My son was killed, and no one could stop that from happening. And I exist in this place, asserting a certain right to exist, and to speak, and just like you, hopelessly existing.” She talks of a civil war, of riots “fueled by racism, xenophobia, foreign influence, class anger, and a simmering paranoia, hysteria on all sides.” The play was inspired by a dystopian dream Maxwell had, and her tale is like a nightmare, tinged with reality.

Soraya Nabipour picks up the story of the impact of loss in NYC Players production at the Kitchen (photo © Paula Court)

When she is done, she walks offstage through a door and is replaced by a second, younger woman (theater maker, facilitator, and PhD researcher Soraya Nabipour) from Odessa, Texas, wearing sneakers, black leggings, and a red sweater. She addresses a person no longer with us, bringing up seemingly random incidents from their past. “I string together memories as though it were some kind of lifeline,” she says. “Is it that we’re so much the same or that we need each other. We horrify each other but we’d die without each other, you know this, and you can’t stand it. Love is the thing you do when there’s nothing left to do. Love is the thing to do beyond words.” She is slightly more active although still appears confined, her past haunting her.

She is followed by a third woman (musician Antonia Summer, who recently trained at the National Youth Theatre in London) in a colorful shirt and long hair. She is from Las Cruces, New Mexico, and moves her body in herky-jerky ways that match her awkward speech patterns; she speaks as if she is learning language right in front of us. “t 6 d 5 6 s 5 6 e r r t s…………………… ient to fine a ja e, msrtik talking to …. pl this is right mao i, r;lorm r p & u.p.i. I,” she says before becoming understandable. “I get electrified with excitement when the towers which dot the horizon light up and connect together aligning that curve that arcs into me blasting my insides with light I am the offspring orphaned by fate and fatality My.” She talks of a father and a mother, of pain and desire, and asks, “whut is progeny?”

Antonia Summer is the liveliest of three connected women in Richard Maxwell’s postapocalyptic Queens Row (photo © Paula Court)

Written and directed by Maxwell, who previously presented The Evening, Natural Hero, and The End of Reality at the Kitchen with his NYC Players company, Queens Row is a gripping fantasy of a frightening near-future. Each character is circled above by a dozen lights, casting dramatic, often eerie shadows across the floor. (The set and lighting design is by Sascha van Riel, with costumes by Kaye Voyce.) The show isn’t so much a warning shot as an alternate reality that hovers just outside our purview; Maxwell includes several ghostly moments that are as scary as they are disconcerting. Hanna, Nabipour, and Summer — perhaps not uncoincidentally brown, black, and white — are each effective in her own right, the three of them interrelated by absence, implying how we all are connected in this dangerous universe, where dire actions have far-reaching consequences. As always with NYC Players, it is a challenging experience, told in uniquely Maxwellian style.

YOU ARE UNDER OUR SPACE CONTROL

Experimental multimedia space opera lands You Are Under Our Space Control at La MaMa this week (photo courtesy Object Collection)

The Downstairs at La MaMa’s Annex
66 East Fourth St.
Thursday – Sunday, January 23 – February 2, $25
212-475-7710
lamama.org
objectcollection.us

Brooklyn-based Object Collection returns to La MaMa this week after taking its Fugazi opera-in-suspension It’s All True to Norway, England, and Texas, with the utopian space opera You Are Under Our Space Control, making its world premiere January 23 – February 2. The company, whose “works upset habitual notions of time, pace, progression, and virtuosity. . . . [valuing] accumulation above cohesion,” goes on an adventure into the great unknown, exploring “space travel, transhumanism, astronautics, and the resurrection of the dead” in a world devoid of natural resources.

The show is written and directed by Object Collection cofounder Kara Feely, the text inspired by Sun Ra, the Russian Cosmists, and astronaut interviews; the music is by cofounder Travis Just, inspired by John Cage’s 1951 “Music of Changes.” The laboratory-like set design is by Peiyi Wong, with lighting by Jeanette Yew, video by Eric Magnus, sound by Robin Margolis, and streaming and programming by Scott Cazan. The multimedia piece will be performed by Steven Ali, Avi Glickstein, Yuki Kawahisa, Annie Kunjappy, Alessandro Magania, Daniel Allen Nelson, Nicolás Noreña, and Fulya Peker along with percussionist Shayna Dunkelman, guitarist Taylor Levine, and singer-songwriter Ava Mendoza. You can get a taste of what’s in store by checking out the music here, including such songs as “Full Contrast,” “Humans, Humans,” “Total Trance,” and “More Hospitable than Antarctica Might Be.” Once the run ends, video feeds will be posted online so you can create your own version of YAUOSC.

TIMON OF ATHENS

Timon (Kathryn Hunter) throws a feast fit for a queen in Timon of Athens (photo by Henry Grossman)

Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 9, $90-$115
866-811-4111
www.tfana.org

New York-born British actress Kathryn Hunter glitters and glows in William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton’s Timon of Athens, which opened tonight at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Fort Greene. Simon Godwin’s production, initiated at the Royal Shakespeare Company and presented here in association with DC’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, should become the gold standard for the rarely performed play, a penetrating and very funny evisceration of greed and true friendship centered around a lust for jewels above all things. The text has been edited by Emily Burns and Godwin to make the lead character female, and TFANA regular Hunter runs with it, delivering an unforgettable, voracious performance as Timon (rhymes with Simon), a widowed noblewoman who loves to host feasts in her mansion where guests bring her trinkets and flatter her to no end and she gives them piles of cash and valuable gems. Painter (Zachary Fine) gives her an absurd portrait, Poet (Yonatan Gebeyehu) heaps words of praise on her, and Jeweller (Julia Ogilvie) offers her a fine stone, and she recompenses them manyfold. Sempronius (Daniel Pearce) insists that Timon not allow one of her servants, Lucilius (Adam Langdon), to marry his daughter despite their being in love, but he changes his mind quickly when she promises him money as a kind of dowry/bribe.

Her loyal steward, Flavius (John Rothman), notifies her that her wealth is dwindling, and the cynical philosopher, Apemantus (Arnie Burton), warns her not to put her faith in these false friends, but she is too caught up in the revelry to pay attention. “I wonder men dare trust themselves with men, / Methinks they should invite them without knives — / Good for their meat and safer for their lives,” Apemantus, the only character not wearing shimmering black or gold but instead a Patti Smith T-shirt, tells the audience. A few moments later, after Timon asks him to be silent, he says, “So. / Thou wilt not hear me now; thou shalt not then. / I’ll lock thy heaven from thee. / O, that men’s ears should be / To counsel deaf, but not to flattery!” When she finally understands that her coffers are empty, she sends out Flaminia, Lucilius, and Flavius to Lucullus (Dave Quay), Sempronius, and Lucia (Shirine Babb), asking for loans, but the trio is cruelly denied. Furious at this drastic change of events, the formerly happy-go-lucky Timon turns her back on the life she so treasured and shared with others. “Nothing I’ll bear from thee / But nakedness, thou detestable town,” she says of Athens. “Take thou that too, with multiplying bans. / Timon will to the woods, where she shall find / Th’unkindest beast more kinder than mankind. / The gods confound — hear me, you good gods all! — / The citizens both within and out that wall, / And grant as Timon grows her hate may grow / To the whole race of mankind, high and low! / Amen.” In the second act, Timon, now in tattered rags, is a bitter woman who spends most of her days digging her own grave until she is discovered by visitors from her past, including Alcibiades (Elia Monte-Brown), who has become the leader of an angry mob protesting the Athenian government.

Timon of Athens is regendered in Simon Godwin’s glittering production at TFANA (photo by Henry Grossman)

Godwin’s sublime and timely interpretation of Timon of Athens addresses homelessness, income inequality, the dispossessed, an unsympathetic state, and humankind’s propensity for greed. Timon is a complex character, both antihero and cautionary figure of what can happen if wealth is all that matters and friends are available for purchase. I would say that Hunter is a revelation in the title role, but she’s been a revelation in almost everything I’ve seen her in, from Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne’s The Valley of Astonishment and Fragments to Hideki Nota’s The Bee and Colin Teevan’s The Emperor. Here she displays a ruggedly coarse physicality that is utterly majestic and downright enthralling, a force of nature unto itself, whether she’s being lifted by her sycophantic, hypocritical guests or carving her own epitaph. The glorious costumes, which range from ostentatious dresses to sleek black suits and, eventually, sackcloth and ashes, are by Soutra Gilmour, who also designed the impressive sets; the stage juts out far into the audience, who sit on three sides, with ramps leading off through two corners.

In the first act, opulence is on view, with a festive table, a large gold backdrop that serves as a doorway, and, later, a rug that apparently needs to be fastened more securely to the floor, as several actors tripped over different parts the night I went. The transformation to a forest for the second act is so dramatic you might want to stay in your seats and watch it instead of hurrying out for the restroom or a drink. At rear left, guitarist and bouzuki player Christopher Biesterfeldt, percussionist Philip Coiro, clarinetist Joshua Johnson, and singer Kristen Misthopoulos perform music by composer Michael Bruce, including one piece based on a Cretan peasant hymn and another from Shakespeare’s fifty-third sonnet. Monte-Brown and Rothman stand out in a strong cast, but it’s Hunter, who has previously portrayed King Lear, Richard III, and Cyrano, who will take your breath away while also making you wonder why you’ve never read or seen this play before.

GREATER CLEMENTS

Joe (Edmund Donovan) takes issue with his mother (Judith Ivey) in Samuel D. Hunter’s Greater Clements (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Through January 19, $92
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Samuel D. Hunter takes a sharp snapshot of a downtrodden America in the poignant drama Greater Clements, which ends its run at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on Sunday. The play is set in Hunter’s home state of Idaho, the site of many of his works (A Bright New Boise, Lewiston/Clarkston). It’s 2017, and Greater Clements is at the end of the line; the Dodson Mine suffered a horrific tragedy in 1972 and shut down in 2005, and now there’s a referendum to abolish the town as a civic entity, at least in part as a reaction to the flood of wealthy Californians moving in. Maggie (Judith Ivey), who owns the local mine museum, is closing up shop; she has just brought her mentally ill twenty-seven-year-old son, Joe (Edmund Donovan), back from a stint in Anchorage, where he went to get away from some trouble he caused but did not necessarily fully understand. Maggie is visited by her high school flame, the gentle and stoic Japanese-American Billy (Ken Narasaki), and his adventurous fourteen-year-old granddaughter, Kel (Haley Sakamoto); Maggie, who is divorced, and Billy, who is widowed, flirt around with the idea of perhaps getting back together. Meanwhile, Maggie’s friend and employee, Livvy (Nina Hellman), is leading the charge for the town to remain incorporated, and Wayne (Andrew Garman), the police chief, is keeping a close watch on Joe, who appears to have potentially dangerous tendencies.

Kel (Haley Sakamoto) tries to befriend Joe (Edmund Donovan) in Greater Clements (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Shrewdly and discerningly directed by Hunter’s longtime collaborator, Davis McCallum (Stupid Fucking Bird, London Wall), the nearly three-hour Greater Clements explores a wide range of issues, from Japanese internment camps and cancer to mental illness and gentrification, from corporate insensitivity and greed to fear and, perhaps most pointedly, loneliness. Dane Laffrey’s potent, active set, which includes a small part of the audience seated in a corner section virtually amid the action, features a second level that descends from above; unfortunately, the construction requires numerous poles that will occasionally block some of your view as the setting changes from the mine and the museum to a bedroom and living room. Yi Zhao’s lighting is supremely effective in the scenes that take place in the mine itself, putting us inside the dark underbelly of America. Tony and Obie winner Ivey (Steaming, Hurlyburly) is exquisite as Maggie, bringing an intimate, realistic warmth to a stalwart woman who deserves better out of life, but Donovan (Lewiston/Clarkston; Xander Xyst, Dragon: 1) steals the show with his powerful, in-your-face portrayal of a man all-too-aware of his situation but not necessarily capable of controlling it.

UNDER THE RADAR: NOT I

Jess Thom’s multidimensional Not I is a stirring evening of communal theater (photo by James Lyndsay)

BRIC House Ballroom
January 10 – January 19, $30
647 Fulton St.
publictheater.org
www.bricartsmedia.org

London-born comedian and disability activist Jess Thom returns to the BRIC House Ballroom with a spectacular sixty-minute presentation, a brilliantly conceived evening that reimagines the theatrical experience, for both actor and audience. In May 2016, Thom, who has Tourette Syndrome, held the New York premiere of her Edinburgh Fringe hit Backstage in Biscuit Land at the Brooklyn arts institution, delivering a “one-woman show for two” that humorously looks at her life and how she deals with Tourette’s, a neurological disorder that causes her to uncontrollably shout out words and phrases, such as “biscuit,” “hedgehog,” “sausage,” “I love cats,” and “Fuck a goat.” (Only ten percent of those with Tourette’s have copralalia, involving foul language.) She also uses a wheelchair, as her disability comprises various physical tics, such as banging her chest whenever she says “biscuit,” that make it too dangerous for her to walk on her feet.

Back at BRIC for the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival, Thom is performing Samuel Beckett’s 1972 monologue Not I in a relaxed, inclusive environment. As you enter the small, intimate black-box space, Thom is in her wheelchair, greeting each audience member and inviting them to sit either on cushions, benches, or folding chairs. She is friendly and outgoing, and she doesn’t pause or change moods when the tics come up. She even plays off them; for example, when she says, “I love cats,” she quickly adds something like, “Well, I don’t really even like cats,” and when she proclaims, “Fuck a goat,” she responds by assuring everyone that no one will be having sex with an animal. Meanwhile, to her right, ASL performer Lindsey D. Snyder signs everything Thom says, including the verbal tics. Reaching the whole audience matters to Thom: The seating in Not I is inspired by how she was rudely treated when she attended a 2011 show by stand-up comic Mark Thomas, when theater staff confined her to a sound booth because other members of the audience objected to her gesticulations and vocal outbursts.

Once everyone is settled, she explains the plans for the evening and describes how a friend had told her that she should consider staging her own version of Not I, because it relates so organically to her life. The play, which has been performed by such actresses as Jessica Tandy, Beckett muse Billie Whitelaw, Julianne Moore, and Lisa Dwan and gets its title because it is told in the third person by the protagonist, is an ellipses-filled diatribe of incomplete thoughts and tangents that generally runs between nine and fifteen minutes; it is not a race, but the performer is expected to go through the 2,268 words as fast as possible. “I am not unduly concerned with intelligibility. I hope the piece may work on the nerves of the audience, not its intellect,” Beckett wrote in a 1972 letter to Tandy prior to the play’s world premiere at Lincoln Center. Dressed all in black, wearing a balaclava and a hoodie, Thom, in her wheelchair, is lifted eight feet in the air (the set is designed by Ben Pacey), and she is lit so only the bottom half of her face can be seen. Usually, only the actress’s mouth can be seen, as if it exists by itself, but changes had to be made because of Thom’s Tourette’s. As she power-drives through the piece, she occasionally gets caught in a series of “biscuit” moments but then forges ahead. She is moving through the dialogue so fast, and so unpredictably, that Snyder, also dressed in black and taking the place of the Auditor, the second character in the play, is practically dancing on the floor. (Beckett’s movement directions for the Auditor note, “This consists in simple sideways raising of arms from sides and their falling back, in a gesture of helpless compassion.”)

The audience is not meant to understand every word and plot detail as a woman, identified as “Mouth” in the script, relates several stories involving shopping in a supermarket, going to court, sitting on a mound in Croker’s Acres, and searching for cowslips in a field, bringing up such concepts as shame, torment, sin, pleasure, and guilt. This protagonist has suffered an unnamed trauma that has led to her becoming an outcast from society and virtually unable to communicate with others via speech. It’s clear why Thom’s friend suggested Not I for her, perhaps most evident from the following excerpt:

“what? . . tongue? . . yes . . . lips . . . cheeks . . . jaws . . . tongue . . . never still a second . . . mouth on fire . . . stream of words . . . in her ear . . . practically in her ear . . . not catching the half . . . not the quarter . . . no idea what she’s saying . . . imagine! . . no idea what she’s saying! . . and can’t stop . . . no stopping it . . . she who but a moment before . . . but a moment! . . could not make a sound . . . no sound of any kind . . . now can’t stop . . . imagine! . . can’t stop the stream . . . and the whole brain begging . . . something begging in the brain . . . begging the mouth to stop . . . pause a moment . . . if only for a moment . . . and no response . . . as if it hadn’t heard . . . or couldn’t . . . couldn’t pause a second . . . like maddened . . . all that together . . . straining to hear . . . piece it together . . . and the brain . . . raving away on its own . . . trying to make sense of it . . . or make it stop . . .”

Not I has a sound map to ensure everyone is comfortable and no one is excluded

Not I has a sound map to ensure everyone is comfortable and no one feels excluded for auditory reasons

When we go to live theater and watch someone stumble over lines or hesitate and stammer as if they’ve lost their place, our hearts tend to sink and we don’t want the actor to be embarrassed. But when Thom, tearing through the words at a frenetic pace, suddenly goes into “biscuit” mode, not only are we rooting for her, we are with her every second, willing her on to get to the finish line with glory. It’s exhilarating when she storms back into Beckett’s language. But it’s important to note that we are not rooting for her because of or in spite of her disability (a word, by the way, that she freely uses); we are helping carry her to the end in a communal act that goes far beyond mere kindness.

The Beckett section is followed by Sophie Robinson’s short documentary Me, My Mouth, and I, which goes behind the scenes of the creation of Thom’s performance, and then Thom — who is also known as Touretteshero for her work with children and for her same-named organization that seeks to “change the world one tic at a time” — offers the audience the chance to talk to their neighbors about their thoughts on the play and ask her questions. The evening, which is passionately directed by her longtime collaborator Matthew Pountney, concludes with Thom signing copies of her 2012 book, Welcome to Biscuitland, in which Stephen Fry writes in the foreword, “Jess is a true hero, with or without her Touretteshero costume. Jess fuck biscuit Thom, I biscuit fuck fuck biscuit salute biscuit you.” And so will you.

one in two

Edward Mawere, Leland Fowler, and Jamyl Dobson star in Donja R. Love’s New Group world premiere, one in two (photo by Monique Carboni)

The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Through January 12, $33-$63
thenewgroup.org

Donja R. Love’s one in two presents the human side of numbers and elements of chance that are staggering: According to the CDC, fifty percent of queer and bisexual black men will contract HIV. Yes, one in two. The eighty-five-minute New Group world premiere takes place on Arnulfo Maldonado’s brilliant set, a blindingly white otherworldly waiting room that wittily morphs into a bar, a bedroom, a hospital room, and other locations. At the top of the back wall, three windowlike panels display numbers that move sequentially, reminiscent of the countdown clock in Lost, except here they go up, tallying the HIV toll second by second. But Love, who wrote the play in his notes app as he approached the tenth anniversary of his testing positive — and “experiencing suicidal ideations,” he explains in a program pamphlet — has not created a somber melodrama about disease. Instead, under the superbly inventive direction of Stevie Walker-Webb, one in two is as funny as it is serious, making its points in complex, intricate scenes filled with humor and intelligence.

As you enter the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center, there are three shirtless men onstage, lounging about as if in a sauna that is not quite right. They take numbers from a ticket dispenser and then play Rock Paper Scissors to determine who will be #1, #2, and #3. (The actors have to know the lines for each character, since their part could change from one night to the next, the chances one in three.) At the show I saw, Leland Fowler was #1, who becomes Donté Hart, a young man who has just learned that he has HIV and the only character to have an actual name. Edward Mawere was #2, and Jamyl Dobson #3; they both play multiple roles, including a nurse, a bartender, Donté’s mother, Kinda Ex-Boyfriend, Married Man at the Center, Trade Hung Like Horse Underscore 99, and Man of Your Dreams. Fowler, Mawere, and Dobson have an intoxicating camaraderie that is a joy to watch, perhaps because each one so well understands the other men’s roles, since they have played them numerous times as well.

#1 (Leland Fowler) gesticulates wildly while facing a positive diagnosis in brilliantly realized play at the Signature (photo by Monique Carboni)

The trio goes back and forth in time, performing key moments from Donté’s life, fully aware that they are play-acting, occasionally breaking away to express their displeasure about what is happening onstage. “I don’t want to be the mom,” #3 says as a scene ends with him as the nurse. “If you don’t have to then neither, neither do I,” #2 replies. “Well, somebody’s gotta do it,” #1 argues. The one who becomes the mom puts on a colorful flowing wrap that is turned inside out for another role, the name of which can’t be printed here. (Andy Jean’s costumes also feature black T-shirts with the numbers 1, 2, and 3 on them to help identify who’s who.) The play has a powerful conclusion that resonates deeply; Love (Sugar in Our Wounds, Fireflies) and Walker-Webb (Ain’t No Mo’) avoid proselytizing and are not seeking sympathy; instead, they have an important narrative to share, and they do so with great skill and compassion while breaking through theatrical conventions. “I’m not just a number. I’m flesh. I’m blood. I feel,” #1 says early on. He’s not just a number, and as the play demonstrates, he might be number one, but his positivity affects so many others in his life. As Love writes in the pamphlet, one in two is “the story of a community — a community that’s in a hidden state of emergency.”

UNDER THE RADAR: NICK PAYNE’S CONSTELLATIONS

Wang Xiaohuan and Li Jialong star in Nick Payne’s Constellations at Under the Radar Festival (photo by Yang Yang)

Ellen Stewart Theatre, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
66 East Fourth St.
January 9-12, $30
Festival continues through January 19
212-475-7710
lamama.org/constellations
publictheater.org

Five years ago, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson starred in Nick Payne’s Constellations on Broadway, a time-bending play set in the quantum multiverse, taking place in the past, present, and future as a beekeeper and a cosmologist repeat scenes over and over again to reveal the intricacies of a relationship. Now artistic director Wang Chong and his Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental are bringing a Chinese twist to the work, which is running January 9-12 at La MaMa as part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival. The ninety-minute multimedia piece, which features live streaming video and a hamster, stars Wang Xiaohuan and Li Jialong, with music by Li Yangfan, set design by Ji Linlin and Di Tianyi, and lighting by Meng Lingyang. The play takes place on a circular white stage on the floor, surrounded by video cameras. At the center of the floor is a hamster on a wheel in a see-through Lucite case. Wang and Ji enact each scene in front of a different camera — multiple versions of how they met, their first night together, fidelity issues, etc. — resulting in distinct visual perspectives and emotions that are watched on a large screen suspended behind them. In between scenes, director Wang cuts to video of the hamster, who is often running on the wheel in either direction, as if he is making the time go backward or forward by his motion, which is accompanied by celestial projections on the floor.

In writing Constellations, Payne — who previously tackled climate change in If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, in which Gyllenhaal made his New York theater debut — was inspired by the work of Columbia physics and mathematics professor Brian Greene, the superstring theorist and author of the highly influential book The Elegant Universe, lending a well-researched scientific edge to the play. Founded in 2008, Théâtre du Rêve Expérimental’s previous productions include Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts 2.0, Mike Daisey’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, Woody Allen’s Central Park West, and such Wang originals as Thunderstorm 2.0 and The Warfare of Landmine 2.0.