Father Was a Peculiar Man

Join us for a screening of Reza Abdoh’s extraordinary, site-specific work Father was a Peculiar Man, an adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov staged in New York City’s Meatpacking District in the summer of 1990. Produced by Anne Hamburger’s En Garde Arts, Father was a Peculiar Man showed how brilliantly Reza applied his specific site-based approach that he developed in Los Angeles to New York City’s urban infrastructure. One of the goals of En Garde Arts’s site-specific journeys through New York’s Meatpacking District was to use the local architecture as a theatrical set while at the same time evoking and playing with the history of the place. The half-deserted cobblestone streets south of Chelsea enhanced the play’s nineteenth-century references. The neighborhood’s past as both a meatpacking and transportation hub via the High Line trains as well as a former center for after-hours sex clubs merge as perfect background for Reza’s spectacular tableaus of gluttony and lust.

Directed by Reza Abdoh, Father Was a Peculiar Man leans on a strong ensemble — Tom Fitzpatrick, Tom Pearl, Juliana Francis — to carry a story that balances spectacle with character.

The film landed with audiences for its craft and performances, and remains one of the most talked-about screen titles of 1990.