JASON Makes World Premiere at VAULT Festival
This is a verbatim staging of Shirley Clarke's groundbreaking 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason.
Internationally acclaimed American ensemble THE GOAT EXCHANGE makes its UK Debut with the world premier of JASON, a verbatim staging of Shirley Clarke's groundbreaking 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason, a cult classic widely considered one of the most significant works in the history of Black and Queer film.
Starring MARCUS AMAGLO in a tour-de-force performance as self-proclaimed hustler, aspiring cabaret artist, and raconteur extraordinaire Jason Holiday and an international ensemble including CHLOE CLAUDEL and JU ZAHKARII, JASON will reexamine the shocking reality of one drunken, winter's night in 1967 including an astonishing, never-before-seen confrontation that was recently rediscovered in a restoration by the ACADEMY FILM ARCHIVE and MILESTONE films.
Filmed in a single night at an NYC apartment, Shirley Clarke's seminal 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason is a shifting depiction of an enigmatic subject, Jason Holliday - in his own words a "hustler" and a "houseboy", a "stone whore" and a "male bitch", a "vicious cunt" and a "sweet, sensitive child". Clarke and her boyfriend, the actor Carl Lee, feature as Jason's unseen and seemingly objective interlocutors, but as the night progresses, their personal entanglements with Jason become bitterly apparent.
Clarke's documentary was a landmark moment in queer cinema and masterpiece of cinéma vérité, which Ingmar Bergman described as "the most extraordinary film I've seen in my life". JASON is a theatrical interpretation of Portrait of Jason exploring the enduring intrigue of the film: its radical subject, its unreliable creators, and the critical events that led up to, and got left out of, Clarke's "portrait"
In this unconventional, unbelievable, and wildly uncanny staging, MARCUS AMAGLO will use an ear-piece and monitor system to channel Jason Holiday's iconic performance of himself and recreate every last word, breath and gesture in real time.
Tickets start at £13, https://vaultfestival.com/events/jason/
Videos
