Losing Something at 3LD Arts

The technology is rad and, despite that fact, I didn't spend the whole performance wondering how it worked (a testament, I think, to how well integrated into the fabric of the performance it is). They're using the Eyeliner system, which makes use of an old stage trick called Pepper’s Ghost that, according to the NYT article, was first used in a 1862 production of Charles Dickens’s “Haunted Man,” at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in London. Quoth the NYT: "John Henry Pepper (1821-1900) is usually credited with discovering the illusion, though an engineer named Henry Dircks was really first to suggest placing an angled piece of plate glass between audience and actors, allowing off-stage objects or people to “appear” reflected on the glass as if they were onstage. When the off-stage lights were turned off, the ghosts seemed to vanish.

With Eyeliner, the unwieldy glass pane is replaced with a lighter, nearly invisible screen." Basically, it's a sophisticated descendent of that nifty thing in the Haunted House at Disney World that allows a ghost to appear next to you in the chair.

The show features the work of Victoria Chamberlin and Livia DePaolis, two of my SITI training cohorts.

I'm very pleased to have "met" 3LD (who are a super friendly bunch, incidentally and they serve fierce spicy tuna hors d'oeuvres at their openings). It's the first 3LD show I've seen, although I've been to their venue before: the New Georges production of Sheila Callaghan's Dead City directed by Daniella Topol (of the Lark) and the opening night of The Mix Festival of queer, independent, wacky, and wonderful films.

Check it out:

www.3leggeddog.org