We have created a performance DVD of Feldman and the Infinite, and are seeking additional productions of the play. Interested producers or theater managers please contact us for more information, or to request the DVD.
On September 11, 12, and 13, 2008, the play Feldman and the Infinite was performed at Artifact Pictures Studios, during the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. We had a wonderful turnout and response, and special thanks are due to the cast for their commitment to the project. On opening night, a reviewer from Interview Press attended, sat in the front row, and made a series of sketches of the performance. Here they are, a wonderful document of a one-time event – they have a life and an energy that even photographs wouldn’t capture. Thank you to artist and Sketch Book Reporter Aaron Krolikowski.
In 1975, Joseph Feldman, a 58-year-old lawyer in New York City, was discovered to have stolen 15,000 books from the New York Public Library. He had rented two or three apartments specifically to store these books, and it took 20 men, 7 truckloads over 3 days to remove them all.
Books covered the stove. Books filled the bathtub and sinks. There was only a small passageway leading through the apartment, not room enough to live.
But why did he do it ?
Was he obsessively hoarding ? Making a political statement ? Making conceptual art ? Or was he simply, as he told the judge who tried his case, reading ? There are no accidents…
Feldman and the Infinite is a new play that speculates about Feldman’s motives, about seeking knowledge and enlightenment, and finding what appears to be randomness and chaos.
Feldman turns to his landlord, and his new acquaintance, the sculptor Christo, for guidance through the maze of his own obsession – told with humor, passion, and love for the library and its contents.
Feldman and the Infinite
a play by Erika Mijlin
featuring Jerry Perna, Jeffrey Adam Baxt, and Ted Borodaeff
Performed as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival
September 11-12-13, 2008 @ 8pm
at Artifact Pictures
or call 215.425.3721 for more information
One of Feldman’s apartments.
Through this door passed many thousands of books. On the way in, brought under secret cover, under coats, inside waistbands, inside satchels. Then, on the way out, packed in large cardboard boxes, headed for a truck set to rumble the lot of them back to the Public Library.
