Reza Abdoh

Bogeyman

A raucous, angry exorcism of relationships and assorted fears, shadowed by the Big One: the plague of AIDS.

Minamata

"Minamata is the name of a fishing village in Japan," said the writer-director ("Peep Show," "Eva Peron," "Rusty Sat on a Hill One Dawn and Watched the Moon Go Down"), who wrote the piece with Mira-Lani Oglesby. "Chisso, a company that makes parts for plastic, dumped mercury waste into the water supply and the fishermen got sick. A high percentage of the villages depended on fish and fishing so their livelihoods dried up too. "The story of Minamata is just the departure point for the play," the writer said. "It's the ghost behind the play, the shadow over it. The piece is a meditation on beliefs, ways of thinking, how operatives in the system create a way of thinking that makes it possible to destroy life in order to improve it. There's a thesis that in order to progress you have to allow for destruction. No. You cannot buy into that way of thinking, because it's erroneous and hurtful."

Sleeping with the Devil

An avant-garde video film short in which actors in various languages, states of dress and undress, standing or lying prone, pontificate about Geraldo Rivera's interview with Charles Manson (as well as the Greek myth of Medea), chopped and edited with off-screen directions and asides by the filmmakers and crew, to a state of borderline incomprehensibility.

Daddy's Girl

A collagistic nightmare vision of psycho-sexual abuse.

The Law of Remains

"The Law of Remains" is a blood-soaked pageant of contemporary Grand Guignol depicting mass murder, sexual mutilation, necrophilia and cannibalism simulated by actors portraying the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (named Jeffrey Snarling in the script) and Andy Warhol and his entourage. The work is divided into seven scenes, scattered over two floors of the hotel, that are intended to trace the soul's journey as described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice

This video was created and projected during the performance of The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice (1990). "The use of the rear-screen video in Hip-Hop hooks you into the psyche of the world outside as well as the psyche of the world inside. When the Captain throws the coffin through the window, you see a world that shatters. The boy behind the window represents the forces behind the window, which are facing us but which we choose not to see. At the start of the play, the figure behind the window, which was before reproduced, is now, at the end of the play, alive. That is translated through light into space, and in space translated to motion. On one level it is completely reproduced, it is not actual; on another level, it's actual, and that is only possible when you are using different media." —Reza Abdoh

The Hip-Hop Waltz of Eurydice

The world premiere in 1990 of an avant-garde, queer retelling of the myth of Orpheus (Tommy) and Eurydice (Dora Lee), focusing on an antagonistic couple who find themselves exploited by Orpheus's overbearing and sexually-predatory boss.

The Weeping Song

Short film by Reza Abdoh.