Ever wonder what it is like to attend a secret play? The Dreary Coast, an immersive theatrical work from Jeff Stark, will enlighten you right on the banks of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.
This retelling of the Persephone myth lets 20 or so theatergoers experience the performance in shallow, flat-bottomed boats up and down the Gowanus. Several dozen spectators watch the play from the shore. The play is legendary in certain Brooklyn underground arts circle, and Stark, who has lived two blocks from the canal for the past 15 years, has been dreaming of staging a performance on its waters for nearly as long. For the past year, he has scouted the bridges and rock formations and vacant lots that dot its banks, surveying the most appealing, and legal, locations for scenes to unfold.
The $40,000 budget for the play was mostly raised on Kickstarter, with dozens of collaborators, including the well-known local “experience architect” N.D. Austin.
But this play begins differently than others. The evening begins in a neighborhood bar, where audience members are asked to sign an indemnity waiver. Priestesses clad in kimonos and eye makeup arrive, wafting incense and ringing bells, leading you to a disused space and where there is a silent ritual. Once the action shifts to the waterway, the Olympian pantheon takes over.
Charon (E. James Ford) and ice queen Persephone (Ava Eisenson) plot an escape from the abyss.
Charon, ferrying a reluctant Persephone, asks, “Why can’t you find beauty here?”
“Because it’s a cesspool,” she replies.
But Stark seems to be telling the audience that there is beauty even in a cesspool.
Tickets for the show are currently sold out.
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