ORSON REHEARSED

Orson Welles’ heart has just stopped.

We enter his mind in this moment, on the threshold between life and death.

In the bardo Orson’s thoughts unspool as a stream of consciousness that loops back on itself, like a Möbius strip. Three avatars onstage in the theater of his mind are paired with three oneiric films within the film as he shuffles through his memories, loves, regrets, like a magician preparing for one last trick.

Is he ready for what comes next?

9/10: LOVE BEFORE THE FALL

The myths of Orpheus and Charon are interwoven with the entirely sung story of four friends dining in an Italian bistro who are fated to perish the next morning in the attack on the Twin Towers.

At meal’s end, through magical realism, the restaurant’s mysterious strolling violinist is revealed to be Charon, hand extended, awaiting payment.

Complying, each reconciles with death, and departs to the sounds of the next morning’s busy signals and the calls of first responders.

I HEAR AMERICA SINGING

Metaphysical documentarians dog the final days of Robbie Doerfler, a Broadway composer who views his life as his art and his demise as a sort of cosmic backer’s audition.

Robbie is the author of his world. But he wants it to be the world that he authors, not the world he actually has authored.

Losing consciousness, he goes up, asking his friends, “Where do performers go when they go up?”

“Is it heaven?”