Art the Rat

Art the rat is a dangerous old friend who will never stop making you questions yourself and your world. It's the East Village in the 1980's and a square married guy from queens shows up looking for art's love. Instead he gets offered harsh revelations. The art galleries gentrifying the neighborhood are actually selling drugs. Art is extreme: a Nazi and a communist. Art will kill you if you don't love him, but if you do love him he'll send you home to a job in computers with your "tales between your legs." That is real life and it "happens too soon or too late." Art is ruthless. He would sleep with a male rhinoceros to get on Broadway. Art hates women. He gets you drunk when you have someplace to go. The writer/director Richard Martinez offers us all plots at once in this classic of downtown avant garde. Lighting by flashlights. A director in the house making the actors "take it back." His shows were unique creations from a singular vision, with the text available finally for the first time so that we can make his theater live again. In real time.