Prospect Theater Company is celebrating 10 years of existence with a spectacular theatrical collaboration. Collage-like in essence, The Dome encompasses three separate story lines, monologues, solos, and inspiration from the very space in which the performance takes life.
The West End Theatre on Manhattan’s upper west side has worked with Prospect since 2003 and is closely linked to the church residing within the same building. The Church of St. Andrew and St. Paul has housed various religious communities in need of space. After gaining landmark status in the 1980’s the interest to develop the theater space grew but questions on how to fund the process became a major concern. Benevolently enough, Paramount Pictures found the space and wanted to shoot the movie “Keeping The Faith” there which was a solution to the financial situation. The architecture of the building became a major model for which The Dome was built on. Cara Reichel, artistic director, expressed that the space is “designed both to allow us to escape ourselves, and to make us aware of our humanity” which coincides with the themes of universe and birth that saturate the performance and cause the audience to contemplate philosophies of the world all around us.
I was continually impressed by the manor in which the very separate story lines and solo scenes flowed so naturally, as if we the audience were sitting on the outside of earth, looking in. Was the audience sitting in the perspective of god, empathetically watching lives unfold where time and space all meshed into one or were we just a part of the bigger picture asking the unanswerable along with the characters in which we observed? All that is certain is that life, whatever it may be, is the heart that continues to beat, beat… beat.
The Dome is playing through March 1st at the West End Theater. Get tickets, period.
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