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There are 17 live actors and dozens more on film, 300 plates broken in anger, several wandering deer and plenty of emotion in Chuck Mee’s multimedia event ” Fire Island,” but the principal character is the fragile barrier reef itself.
The mix of video and theater that opens today at the 3-Legged Dog Art %26amp; Technology Center in lower Manhattan will immerse viewers in extreme close-ups and wide-angle panoramas of dunes and marshes and scrubby woods. But it’s hardly a nature show: In one segment, shot last summer in Cherry Grove, a conga line of skimpily dressed drag queens sashays through the dunes, accompanied by a rumbling rendition of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by a throat singer from the Russian republic of Tuva.
Viewers will sprawl on pillows or lie back in beach chairs in the center of the space as a collage of filmed scenes fills a vast curving screen or suddenly materializes like holograms on see-through plastic panels. Flesh-and-blood actors will step through the crowd and play opposite filmed version of themselves.
“I’m tired of feeling like I’m in church when I go to the theater,” says 3LD artistic director Kevin Cunningham. “We want people to come in and feel relaxed and comfortable, and dance or walk around and have conversations while the play’s going on. We want them to enjoy it and go along for the ride.”
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“Fire Island” runs today through May 3 at 3LD Art %26amp; Technology Center at 80 Greenwich St. in Manhattan. For tickets and information, call 212-352-3101 or go to 3LDNYC.org.
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Tags: actors, amp, artistic director, day, gypsy, Live, love, music