thingNY

To enter the performance space of Paul Pinto’s "MANO A MANO" is to find oneself seated not before a proscenium, but around a giant Arthurian round table, a scenic choice that immediately dismantles the distance between the observer and the observed. One is not merely an audience member; one is a guest at a grim, historical banquet where the main course is the fractured psyche of the British Isles. Pinto, a playwright-composer-performer of singular, manic energy, has crafted a libretto that functions as a rhythmic autopsy of masculinity, tracing a lineage of "headless alpha males" from the Trojan War to the contemporary boxing ring. [more]