Chicago’s newest theatre company, Big Picture Group, presents .duck, freely adapted from Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck. .duck documents the struggles of a family torn between the comforts of self-delusion and a fanatic’s mission to hold the mirror up to their “life lie.” Exposition becomes the jump cut and the photographic image becomes virtual reality in this adaptation, set in the media-saturated, fashion-frenzied world of postmodern America.
Using video and digital technology to create a metaphoric landscape for the drama, and radically restructuring the original play, .duck promises to re-situate Ibsen while remaining true to his own provocative spirt. |
Chicago’s newest theatre company, Big Picture Group, presents .duck, freely adapted from Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck. .duck documents the struggles of a family torn between the comforts of self-delusion and a fanatic’s mission to hold the mirror up to their “life lie.” Exposition becomes the jump cut and the photographic image becomes virtual reality in this adaptation, set in the media-saturated, fashion-frenzied world of postmodern America.
.duck stars Ken Pierce as Hjalmar and Andrew Schneider as Gregers, the moral fanatic who destroys Hjalmar in order to save him. Also starring are Sally Bell as Hjalmar’s wife Gina, and Amber Robinson as Hedwig, their young daughter who suffers the direst effect of Gregers’s moralism.
Rounding out the cast are Tony Lopez as Hjalmar’s hapless father, and as his ex-business partner and nemesis Werle, Matt Erickson. Simone Roos is Werle’s mistress, Mrs. Sorby, and Allan Quioit is Relling, the friend who attempts to stop the inevitable. Others in the cast include Erin Liston and Nick Simon.
Using video and digital technology to create a metaphoric landscape for the drama, and radically restructuring the original play, .duck promises to re-situate Ibsen while remaining true to his own provocative spirt.
Roger Bechtel, director of graduate studies at Miami University of Ohio, will direct the production. The production team includes Tony-nominated costume designer Marcia McDonald, New York video artist Andrew Schneider, and Chicago lighting designer Margaret Hartman. Amanda Johnson is the production stage manager.
Big Picture Group is a collective of theatre artists who have joined together from Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, and elsewhere. Bertolt Brecht argued that to understand the complexities of the world, one must learn to see complexly. Yet today, in an age in which our vision is increasingly arrested by commercial media, complex seeing has become vastly more difficult. In response, Big Picture Group uses theatre as a lens through which the often obscure dynamics of contemporary life might be brought into focus. Our mission: to see, differently. |
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