“Eye Piece” begins with writer/actor Rinde Eckert, alone on stage, speaking directly and frankly with the audience about the play we are about to experience. It’s a pretty meta moment, one that is repeated at different times in the play and always feels refreshing. But wait, the “meta” doesn’t stop there: a group of aspiring eye doctors and instructor present a frame throughout, i.e. we as an audience watch them watch the drama unfold. Characters speak directly to the audience freely throughout. The awareness is at time mind-boggling.
With the increasing sophistication of movies and 3D technology (Avatar is the prime example), it’s hard to sit down and watch a play that tries to be as visually stunning as its cinema counterparts. But when it comes to self-awareness, cinema can’t hope to top an encounter with a living, breathing human being in the room with you. This is where theater has its greatest strength, and it’s what makes “Eye Piece” so compelling.
And yes, it even manages to be visually stunning in parts (ironic for a work dealing with blindness, but of course Eckert is aware of that, too). A scene featuring three personified demi-god characters (Fear, Ignorance and Blindness) is probably the most eye-catching: Blindness looking sharp in his neatly-pressed suit, Ignorance with her disheveled Bob-Marley hair and patchwork attire, and Fear, described as a “cross between a Medieval night and a welder,” a looming, terrifying figure who pulls up a chair at the stage’s periphery and sticks palpably in the audience’s mind for much of the play. It’s Fear who is most memorable here, and for good reason: there is no more appropriate emotion for the feeling of losing one’s sight.
With the increasing sophistication of movies and 3D technology (Avatar is the prime example), it’s hard to sit down and watch a play that tries to be as visually stunning as its cinema counterparts. But when it comes to self-awareness, cinema can’t hope to top an encounter with a living, breathing human being in the room with you. This is where theater has its greatest strength, and it’s what makes “Eye Piece” so compelling.
And yes, it even manages to be visually stunning in parts (ironic for a work dealing with blindness, but of course Eckert is aware of that, too). A scene featuring three personified demi-god characters (Fear, Ignorance and Blindness) is probably the most eye-catching: Blindness looking sharp in his neatly-pressed suit, Ignorance with her disheveled Bob-Marley hair and patchwork attire, and Fear, described as a “cross between a Medieval night and a welder,” a looming, terrifying figure who pulls up a chair at the stage’s periphery and sticks palpably in the audience’s mind for much of the play. It’s Fear who is most memorable here, and for good reason: there is no more appropriate emotion for the feeling of losing one’s sight.
With “Eye Piece,” Eckert smartly keeps the audience in the loop through direct addresses and asides, and the effect is as powerful as any virtual world a computer can generate, 3D or not.
