LAST LIFE: A Shakespeare Play Makes Premiere in NYC

The Box Collective in collaboration with Piece of Yourself announces the premiere of Last Life: A Shakespeare Play, which will premiere on June 14 in New York City. A movement-based theatrical performance directed by Sara Fay George, the piece is crafted entirely from the plays, songs, and poems of William Shakespeare. A man and woman, trapped in a circle of salt, face the wounds of their past in this dramatic and visceral exploration of the evolution of love. Last Life: A Shakespeare Play runs June 14-30 at LOFT 29 (525 W. 29th Street). Tickets are $18 and are available at https://www.artful.ly/store/events/15284.

Last Life: A Shakespeare Play includes performances by Esther Sophia Artner and Mikaal Bates*.

The production will also include a curated photography exhibition from Theik Smith, which will be on display in the performance space. The photography series centers on the human form, and is an extension of the theatrical performance created to further explore the multifaceted, evolving nature of intimacy and the human relationship.

As primordial man and woman face unity's final threshold, they must face their scars, betrayals, and vulnerabilities through a matrix of Shakespeare's wit and words. Trapped in a circle of salt, both are victims as well as predators, facing lifetimes of trauma in order to move forward and become free of lifetimes of hurt.

Written and conceived by director Sara Fay George, Last Life: A Shakespeare Play is entirely comprised of Shakespeare's texts on love, life, men and women. The striking assemblage of the greatest English playwright's words reveals the evolution of relationship, innocent inception, the pains of rejection and betrayal, the anguish of despondency, and finally the ecstasy of surrender. The performance incorporates natural, yet heightened movement as a Man and a Woman move through their last life. With both performers trapped within a confined performance space, a primal and kinetic energy is created - simultaneously attracting, repelling, colliding and surrendering with one another. Last Life: A Shakespeare Play is an exploration of masculine vulnerability and the embracing of feminine strength, revealing the elemental and essential human truth that only our bodies are truly our own and in the end, they too must be left behind.

Last Life was first produced under the title 116 and premiered Off-Broadway at the New Ohio Theater in April 2014, under the direction of Andrea Goldman and Julia Watt of the Box Collective. After an additional workshop, it was then performed at The New York Shakespeare Convention in the spring of 2017.

The Box Collective is a female guided international artistic collective established in 2010 to explore and present new and emerging theatre work that blurs the line between art and performance. Where the goal is to break down the barrier between performer and audience and in doing so create an immersive performance experience. The objective is the creation of living art that allows an audience to exist within the production and thus in turn be changed by the experience. www.thebox-collective.com

Piece of Yourself creates and produces both performance and film dedicated to authentic and intimate storytelling, building bridges in the shape of stories and bringing into light what has been hiding in the dark. By offering audiences real experiences of the surreal and the magical, and reconnecting people to a core experience of their own values, and humanity. Piece of Yourself is dedicated to raising the voices of female storytellers, telling tales inspired by real people and real events through different mediums and discovering the place where everyday simple magic moments and realism collide. www.pieceofyourself.com