Ingrid Kapteyn

On January 24-26, 2020 in the heart of Manhattan, Sleep No More stars Ingrid Kapteyn and Tony Bordonaro gave life and meaning to the world premiere of The Pigeon & The Mouse, a dystopian journey in an apocryphal stage setting that conveyed the tension, heartbreak, and the tragedy of two lovers struggling to survive in the ruins of a building, all in the wake of a global nuclear civil war.

Tony Bordonaro © PhillipSpaeth

“Once upon a time,” they told their sell-out audiences in five Pigeon & The Mouse performances, “there was a Land Creature and a Sky Creature who were deeply in love who learned that the earth was falling out of the sky.”

Fallout indeed was raining down upon the earth: the earth was falling out of the sky.

Accentuating the performance duo’s own creative artistry was original wall-to-ceiling artwork, together with canvas panels hung throughout the performance space, brought to New York City by two brilliant artists / painters Olya Dubatova and Levon Petrosyan.

Olya Dubatova

Through their artful movement of mind, music, dialogue, and the actors’ evocative use of their bodies, Kapteyn and Bordonaro painted a live portrait of the tragedy of conflict, tenacity, letdown and love. Especially love.

Levon Petrosyn

Their magic with paintbrush and color set both the stage and setting for what was to unfold at performance time.

Enjoy these images from The Pigeon & The Mouse, mostly the impressive artistic camerawork by acclaimed New York photographer Natalie Deryn Johnson, with a few extra by Dubatova and NPAFE’s own Cliff Brody.