The Big Event Part 1, 2, 3 – Director’s Cut

The Big Event Part 1, 2, 3 – Director’s Cut is the final instalment of our long term project concerning the 60’s in general, and JFK’s assassination in particular. The piece is built as 3 separate and distinct parts; however, put together in one evening the parts create the big picture. A proposition, on our part, on how to stage a political play nowadays.
(for more details on the project go to THE BIG EVENT)

 
Part 1
The 60’s, the audience as jury members
The decade’s political beginning, the election of JFK, was marked by optimism. That mood was shattered by Kennedy’s assassination. Was the assassination politically motivated, was it an act of personal hatred or even envy, or was it just an act of a mad and disturbed young man?
Staged as the court of public opinion, Part 1 invites the audience to a roller-coaster of conspiracy theories and asks them to form a judgement regarding the big questions: Who killed JFK? Who wanted him dead? Who contributed to the anti JFK mood that led to him being killed? What was killed with him, politically, socially, culturally?
(for an earlier version of part 1 go to The Big Event, part 1)

 
Part 2
Today, the audience as extras
Part 2 consists mainly of documentary materials we shot in Dallas, TX, November 2011.
Staged as a “lunch” (in actuality it is a dinner), the audience is treated to a full meal and a movie. The “lunch” is a loose reenactment of an actual lunch that took place in Dallas, TX, in November 22, 1963. In that lunch, political and business dignitaries were waiting for Kennedy to show up and give a political speech as part of his reelection campaign. Those people missed the “real action” that took place in another part of Dallas. The movie is a failed attempt to fill-in the gaps in their knowledge.
(for more on our Dallas trip, go to The Dallas Blog)
 

Part 3
The last 50 years, the audience as witnesses
Part 3 consists mainly of court transcripts, commissions’ testimonies, excerpts from books by several eyewitnesses, police and FBI interrogations, and some media-outlets reporting and interviews.
Staged as a field-trip to the crime scene, the audience serve both as bystanders in Dealey Plaza and as witnesses to the events unfolding via the different stories.
Part 3 is an attempt in theatre, an attempt to create a “proper” text/play out of the huge material that exists in this case.