Description

Incubator Arts Project
St. Mark’s Church, January 2011

Based on Nicholas Ray’s film BIGGER THAN LIFE

Christina Rouner and Thomas Jay Ryan perform every line of Nicholas Ray’s cult masterpiece, alternating characters just as two people do while reading a play aloud. They speak quickly and never telegraph scene shifts, so we’re kept spinning and disoriented as one moment Ryan sounds like a taxi dispatch, the next like the principal Rouner played minutes before. The only personae they reserve for themselves are druggie-dad Ed (Ryan) and wife Lou (Rouner), so we know exactly who’s who during the flatly delivered, flatly hysterical sex scene.

Photos by: Jill Steinberg