The Body Electric

Linus Gelber

Another Thursday, another last-minute theatrical assignment with friends. On Wednesday I catch the middle of three performances of Struck, a new dramatic musical by Robert Saietta and Rebecca Hart. I've got a couple of friends in the cast, and I'm a happy fan of Rebecca's music, and so I enjoy the show even more than I might have otherwise.

After the performance, over a couple of nearby beers at the Broome Street Bar, someone wonders why I'm not taking pictures of the show, and so I have sudden plans for the next night. I perch up at the back of the theater, by the lighting and sound boards, and take what seem like extremely loud pictures in what is, overall, a pretty quiet piece. "CLICK," yells the camera. "CLICK, CLICK." They tell me it's not quite as bad as I remember it.

This shot is a post-show setup; during the performance I was only able to get mixed results with the show's slide projections, which are a lot brighter in the mind than they are in the lens. Martina Potratz plays the memory of a young wife, visiting the mind of a man from Ohio in his moments of weakness. The play overall muses on electricity, lightning, transience, exaltation, and some of the themes and motifs of The Tempest; also, there's music and a guy in a lion suit.

Martina is patient and still for this shot, which is set up slow at 1/10 of a second.

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