NYU Skirball and Under the Radar Festival Present MOBY DICK Next Month

NYU Skirball and Under the Radar Festival present Moby Dick, an adaptation of Herman Melville's mythical work, halfway between theater and puppet show, featuring seven actors, fifty puppets, video projections, a drowned orchestra and a whale-sized whale, running January 12-14 at NYU Skirball. Yngvild Aspeli stages this visual adaptation of Melville's beast of a book, from the Norwegian theater company Plexus Polaire. Running time: 90 minutes

An ancient white whale, a captain steering his ship into destruction, and the inner storms of the human heart. Moby Dick is the tale of a whaling expedition, but also the story of an obsession or an investigation into the unexplained mysteries of life.

Plexus Polaire was founded in Auxerre (France) in 2008 by Yngvild Aspeli, a Norwegian stage director, actor, and puppeteer who studied in France at the Ecole internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and at the Ecole nationale supérieure des arts de la marionnette in Charleville-Mézières. Aspeli has recently been named Artistic Director of the renowned Nordland Visual Theatre in Stamsund, Norway for the next four years.

Yngvild Aspeli, Artistic director of Plexus Polaire, develops a visual world that brings our most buried feelings to life. The use of life-sized puppets is at the center of her work, but the actors' performances, the presence of the music and the use of light and video are all equal elements in communicating the story.