News: Krista Knight's "Crush" Named a Finalist for the Broadway On Demand Film Festival

Image courtesy Emily Owens PR

Crush, a VR puppet play by Krista Knight, is a finalist for the Broadway on Demand Film Festival, a short film festival to honor the groundbreaking ways in which creators approach theater in a digital age and socially-distant world. The short film with the most views by September 13 will be live-streamed on the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Emmy® OTT platform this fall. To watch Crush, just create a free account at Broadway On Demand.

Crush is a six-part video puppet play created by No Puppet Co. using virtual reality. Picking up roughly from where Kafka left off—a loner, squatter, and rebel dares to love. We follow the anti-morphosis through a series of beat poetry performances as our hero draws nearer to the object of his desire and his undoing. 

When Crush, a finalist for the 45th Annual Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival, was canceled due to COVID-19, Knight and Barry Brinegar decided to use the virtual tools they'd been experimenting with prior to the pandemic to create something completely remotely, completely in-house (as in literally in their house). Crush was created in Knight and Brinegar’s 500 sq-ft home studio in the East Village. They recorded actor Ben Beckley in two sessions over Zoom (on his iPhone) and set up a home nerve center with 5 monitors (assembled from a motley crew of tablets, computers, and spare screens) and used virtual technologies to capture motion in 3D space to match the vocal performance. With one person in virtual reality and the other watching the footage, they recorded the live animation.

You can read our review of Crush from last summer here (and our review of Knight and Brinegar's recent "roadkill musical" Sloppy Bonnie here).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Characters Search for Clarity in the Blurring Boundaries 2022 Festival

Image
Blurring Boundaries 2022: Program B Plays: Iphis and Ianthe at the Courthouse , written by Aly Kantor and directed by Jonathan Wong Frye; Sons and Fathers , written by Mark Hofmaier and directed by Susanna Frazer; Prometheus Found , written by Michael Narkunski and directed by Perryn Pomatto; Building Blocks , written by Arielle Beth Klein and directed by Jennifer Downes; Shakespeare Recalibrated , written by Amanda Hanna and directed by Sydney Burtner; Ava Hearts Riley , written by Cris Eli Blak and directed by Syona Varty; and Redhead Only Orgy , written by Ruthie Rado and directed by Todd Butera Presented by New Ambassadors Theatre Company at TADA! Theater 15 W. 28th St., Manhattan, NYC August 10-21, 2022 Bryan Patrick Stoyle and Ruthie Rado in Iphis and Ianthe at the Courthouse . Photo credit: Ruthie Rado The plays included in the 2022 incarnation of New Ambassadors Theatre Company's Blurring Boundaries festival, which is dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices, apply th
Read more

Review: Even If You're Too Busy for Death Himself, Make Time for "Shut UP, Emily Dickinson"

Image
Shut UP, Emily Dickinson Written by Tanya O'Debra Directed by Sara Wolkowitz Presented at Abrons Arts Center 466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan, NYC July 28-August 13, 2022 Tanya O’Debra as Emily Dickinson and Gregg Bellón. Photo by Molly Broxton. Not so long ago, television's Dickinson gave us Emily Dickinson the cool, rebellious, queer, feminist teen. Now, the stage at Abrons Arts Center gives us a new Emily Dickinson, and she is…mostly not those things; but neither is she the austere, reclusive genius of other imaginings. In Tanya O'Debra's wickedly funny Shut UP, Emily Dickinson , the poet would be quite happy if everything could just be how she wants it when she wants it that way; and just because she is correct that she should not be forced to conform to others' ideas of things such as love does not mean that she cannot at the same time be exasperating to those others–to be the kind of person, say, who assumes that her wealthy family's laborers
Read more

Review: Telling is Power(ful) in Phenomenal Dark Comedy "FUKT"

Image
FUKT Written by Emma Goldman-Sherman Directed by Janice L. Goldberg Presented by B&C Productions and AND Theatre Company in association with The Tank at The Tank 312 W 36th Street, NYC, Manhattan October 27-November 13, 2022 Julia Mack, Bridget Ann White, and Eileen Sugameli. Photo by Valeria Terranova The set design for FUKT is dominated by a large collage on the back wall that, depending on how one looks at it, could suggest either a flower or a wound; the tension between–and perhaps the simultaneity of–these possibilities provides a useful symbol for the show itself, which powerfully mixes sportive comedy and forthright reckonings with cruelty and abuse and filters it all through self-aware play on the conventions of both solo shows and trauma narratives. Written by Emma Goldman-Sherman, FUKT , bending that fourth wall right from–and even before–its opening moments, finds Emma (Bridget Ann White) running into some difficulties on the opening night of her autobiographical one
Read more