Empathy School & Love Story
About the show
Abrons Arts Center presents the NYC premiere of two monologues by Aaron Landsman. More…
In 'Empathy School,' an out-of-work bus driver (Jim Findlay) shares a layered, immersive story during an overnight ride through rural Illinois. Rough music, played live by composer Brent Green and his cohorts, creaks and throbs. 'Love Story,' performed by Frank Harts, is about a disappearing city, two people navigating it, and a fidgety, obsessive follower.
“We experience the two one-acts as meditations—they're intentionally drifting, static, elliptical, hypnotic...Directing his own work, Landsman reveals a gift for low-key dazzle...Indeed, special tribute must be paid to the look and feel of the evening...The show makes you experience the familiar theater with new appreciation; Landsman's texts here are good, but it's the way he writes on the space itself that makes your heart leap with delight.” Full Review
"There are those rarer plays to which you to want to go solo. Take 'Empathy School & Love Story', the writer and director Aaron Landsman’s engaging diptych on varieties of loneliness...It’s an ideal single-ticket show, perfect for pondering on a quiet walk home by yourself...Though it deftly uses 21st-century technology, Mr. Landsman’s production is also steeped in the harsh sentimentality associated with literature from the early days of this country’s industrialization." Full Review
See it if you are moved by honest probing work free of cheap, manipulative plots. Journey to the crossroads of performance, heart, and smarts.
Don't see it if you don't want to see the thrilling promise of 21c theater that can soulfully shake, challenge, and move you w/o deceit and fakey sentiment.
See it if you're game for an unexpected immersive journey
Don't see it if oblique, meditative, evocative storytelling is not your thing
See it if Love it
Don't see it if Go see it
See it if Greg Crowley
Don't see it if Say Something
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