The Playgoer: Donnie Darko...on stage

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Monday, October 29, 2007

Donnie Darko...on stage

ART is doing a stage adaptation of Donnie Darko???

Marcus Stern, who helmed the theater's popular, genre-bending "The Onion Cellar" in collaboration with local rock group the Dresden Dolls, stages his own adaptation of the indie pic....

[A] special effects film that featured time portals, car crashes and burning buildings would seem an unlikely candidate for the stage. Make that the small stage -- ART's Zero Arrow Theater seats 300.

Stern, however, didn't see it that way, saying the project fit in with the type of non-realistic theater to which he is drawn....Younger auds, he says, connect with things that have a contemporary pace and a different hard-core aesthetic. "You're seeing actors and music and everything collide really fast, back and forth, which to me reflects what younger audiences are going to in general..."

Yup. He's onto something.

More info on the ART site.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

ugh. more turning decent films into second-rate theatre. (a fetish in the uk, too, right now). employ some playwrights, people.

Anonymous said...

Decent films? This has to be one of the most unwatchable movies of the last 20 years. Hipsters only liked it because they were on drugs when they watched it. UGH.

Anonymous said...

Don't you think that you should see the play before you judge it as second rate, anonymous?

Anonymous said...

well, i know how film and theatre are different, and which kinds of stories tend to work better in each medium, and i have seen three translations of films to the stage, recently, each of which was a significantly inferior experience to the original - so, though i acknowledge there's a chance 'donnie darko' on stage may be an improvement on the film, i think it's highly unlikely, and i'm not sure i want to spend five times what i spent to see the film to find out..