Landscape of the Body

T. Schreiber Studio presents John Guare’s Landscape of the Body, directed by Terry Schreiber.

Set in a outrageous but deeply brutal 1970s Greenwich Village, Landscape of the Body traces the humorously surreal and tragic experiences of a naïve woman, Betty from Bangor, Maine, who comes to the City with her teenage son, Bert, intending to convince her sister to return to their quiet home in New England. Instead, her sister entices Betty to remain in New York by telling tales of her own double life where by day she works in a mysterious travel agency and by night stars in porno films. When, without warning, Betty’s sister is suddenly mowed down and killed by an indifferent and irate bicyclist, she takes on her dead sister’s life of glamour and seedy glitz with surprising ease. The porno star, now dead, merrily continues to supply the hidden background to the action taking place on stage in a series of ironic comments, vaudevillian asides, and sardonic songs. Meanwhile, Bert, embarked on a journey with a gang of cynical, amoral peers, proceeds from nasty petty crimes to the hysteria that results in his own horrific murder. The growing disillusionment that has affected both mother and son as they watch their misguided aspirations toward American dream go awry, ends up dividing them irrevocably. Finally, Betty must choose between her sister’s American nightmare in which death is freedom and life is a “fishhook” in the bloody mouths of the living, and her own dawning vision of life as unpredictable and mysterious and love with a failed detective as worth a try.

There is an added matinee on February 21st at 3pm

The performance on Saturday, February 7th at 8pm is a Special Benefit Performance. Tickets for this performance are $40.