Rainer Fassbinder's film “Beware of a Holy Whore” comes to life this weekend when an all-new staged theatrical adaption of the 1971 film by the filmmaker premieres on stage at Chelsea's Visual Arts Theater in Manhattan.
Fassbinder’s “Beware of a Holy Whore” (“Warnung vor einer heiligen Nutte”) is a multimedia adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1971 darkly comic film about the making of a film. In the hands of Romanian director Doris Mirescu, faculty member at The School of Visual Arts and her class of Advanced Acting students, Fassbinder's rich characterizations and deadpan blend of melodrama and pseudo-documentary style have found a thrilling new life of trash and high culture.
The entire show and exercise is about the transformation of a space into a teaching and learning environment, much like a full-scale movie production, as the play explores controversial themes of reality and sexuality with a full-cast of 20 young actors, including Brooklyn's own William P. Smith, a Brooklyn Heights resident, in the lead role.
“Inaugurating the stage of the School of Visual Arts new theatre, with its crisscrossing cameras, live feed video, live music and a cast of twenty, this adaptation of “Beware of a Holy Whore” dramatizes a communal creative process fraught with sexual mayhem, chemical distortions and the exaltation and burden of discovering one's difference in the world,” says Mirescu.
The production will be performed May 15, 16 and 17 at 8 p.m. at The Visual Arts Theater (333 W. 23rd Street). Tickets for the play are $15 (General Admission) and ($10 (students), and on sale now by calling (212)724-5004 and via email at do@dangerousgroundproductions.com. For more information, go to www.Bewareofaholywhore.com.