David Van Tieghem

Comedy Fiction. A million years ago, prehistoric clowns roamed the earth, cast out from the society of the primitive, and humorless, cave-people. They wander a bleak and threatening land until their discovery of comedy unlocks their unique potential. The clowns overcome the hostility of the cave-people by showing them that there is an option to mere survival and fear; there is silliness.

A small Oklahoma town is stripped of its innocence when one of its boys turns up mute and bloodied by the lakeside. Unable to tell his story, the local sheriff embarks on a quest to uncover the roots of a gruesome crime. He's led to Ainsley DuPree and her new husband, Jack, a man whose interest in family may very well outweigh his morals.

Set in the American Midwest, Perfect Lives is “about” bank robbery, cocktail lounges, geriatric love, adolescent elopement, the changing of the light at sundown, et al. One of the definitive text-sound compositions of the late 20th century, it has been called "the most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s".

A lesbian college graduate, trying to bankroll her own photography business, works as a high-priced New York City escort.

Penn Jillette and Teller are called upon to display their unique brand of humor to save civilization from strange extraterrestrial beings who have invaded Earth and who, disgruntled and bored with the mundane nature of human life, threaten to blow up the planet unless someone gives them a good reason not to.

Vicky, an out-of-work actress, struggling waitress and lesbian has her whole life thrown into turmoil when her father comes from Germany to visit. The main problem is that Vicky has told him she is a successful actress and happily married. She enlists the help of a gay friend to play her husband. Using a large range of characters—gay, lesbian, straight, transsexuals—the film creates a funny and touching view of family dynamics and sexuality.

A sequel to Ear to the Ground, Ear-Responsibility finds avant-garde percussionist David Van Tieghem roaming the streets of New York, discovering the inherent rhythms and music in ordinary objects, from sidewalks to subway cars.

In this Broadway stage production, Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad take on the title characters in a modern adaptation of the timeless classic, Romeo and Juliet.

Revisiting this acclaimed work – a brutal one-act comedy about a learning-to-drive daughter who comes face-to-face with the mother she thinks has let her down – Good As New first played in 1993-94 as part of MCC’s (then called Manhattan Class Company) One Acts. It was then extended to a full-length work and presented by MCC in 1997.

This tense workplace thriller examines the realities of so-called “post-racial” America. Co-workers are driven apart by the machinations of their boss, and a chilling power struggle ensues that spins wildly out of control.

Happy couple Geoffrey and Lillian move out to a rural country location so Geoffrey can concentrate on his work. Shutting himself off in a shed out back, Geoffrey is slowly consumed by his work as well as his impending madness.

An amusing, extraordinarily insightful conversation between client and service provider takes place in admittedly a most unlikely location; a location where what one would expect turns out to be quite the opposite than the anticipated. The unlikely location is Tiffany's fantasy dungeon, where anything is possible. The result... A challenge to the nature of existence and the essence of love.

Features live recordings from the 1986 nationwide tour that accompanied the release of the album Miraiha Yaro. It is particularly noteworthy that the tour lineup featured a group of seasoned musicians, primarily based in New York, showcasing their talents. Incidentally, this was Sakamoto’s first solo tour, and it visited 24 venues across the country. Featuring a wide-ranging selection of tracks—including songs from Miraiha Yaro, classic hits from his YMO days, the theme from Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, and a single co-written with Thomas Dolby—this is a pop album well worth listening to.

The story of Willard from Ashley's opera Atalanta, recounted in 3 parts.

A television documentary produced for British Television directed by Peter Greenaway.

White Homeland Commando takes the familiar terrain of network action drama and tilts the playing field. Reminiscent of today's popular reality-based cop shows, White Homeland Commando offers a straightforward story: four members of a special police unit investigate and infiltrate a New York-based white supremacist organization. But that is where the commonplace ends. The teleplay is shot and edited in a highly textured visual style, the colors are subdued yet somehow garish, and the sound is deliberately just out of sync with the speaker's lips. Occasional static combines with jumps in the plot — the editing is reminiscent of a television viewer flipping channels.

In Ear to the Ground, David Van Tieghem uses the city of Manhattan as his musical instrument, playing the surfaces of the sidewalks, buildings and phone booths with his drumsticks to elicit an ingenious range of percussive sounds.

Documentary film version of the stage show in which actress Cynthia Gates Fujikawa explores the story of her father, actor Jerry Fujikawa, who had a long career in films and television, most often as a stereotyped Asian. The daughter, in the course of searching out her late father's history, discovers many things that she had not known, among them that her father had spent time in Manzanar, the internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, that he had had a family prior to hers, and that somewhere out there was a sister she had never known existed.

Buried inside the epic American opera for television, “Perfect Lives” are the boogie-woogie lessons being sold by Buddy to untalented people in the middle of America. This pilot for the series is an abstraction that plays on the meaning of life (which is unknowable) and how to make art (impossible to teach) featuring the sublime mysteries of the traveling musician.

After losing her teaching career in the Catholic school system, a transgender woman has a profound impact on the lives of two children–one with two fathers in marital strife, and the other a recent transplant from a conservative household. When the children form a unique bond, new questions and old prejudices erupt.

A documentary by Shaun Costello about Time Magazine