The story, which explores young artists and the manipulative older directors in their lives, is a rich one. In many ways, this is because everybody alive knows such an instructor. In today’s offering, Backstage, writer-director Emile Schlesser explores the tale of a budding young actor and his controlling theater director, Cosima (Sascha Ley). Lukas (Jonathan Joèl Albrecht) is having a wondrous breakthrough role in a two-person play. Cosima is the warm, nurturing, controlling theater director with a secret; she seduces the most talented male actors she works with. Being a cougar, Cosima is very into young men like Lukas.
Backstage is a taut psycho-sexual game of cat and mouse. It’s very clear Cosima is in control of the situation the entire time. No matter what is chosen or selected by Lukas, Cosima will have her way. Either he will bend to her will, or there goes his first star turn. This is a tale as old as time, dear reader. However, because it’s deeply ingrained in human psyches and psychology, it never loses its magnetism. Backstage will have you spellbound for the entire 26 minutes it runs. This is the sort of dynamic fireworks that play out when the artistic personalities clash on the most intimate and sensual arena available: the living theater stage. There on the stage, life is meant to be reproduced in a lovingly exaggerated manner. Live theater, one of my professors would aver, is the most dangerous art form. For it is in that live exchange of physicality and emotion that anything can and will happen.
A performer raises her arms over a body lying on a red-lit stage in Backstage.
“Cosima is the warm, nurturing, controlling theater director with a secret; she seduces the most talented male actors she works with.”
Such is the situation in Backstage. Lukas is clearly working his heart out. He will symbolically and possibly literally leave everything for the stage and his performance. Cosima, conversely, is doing everything she can to goad and coax the real emotions and physical fervor of Lukas. Time and again, she mentions that she hasn’t seen an actor as talented as him in a long time.
Backstage is a real barnstormer of a theater production. If you like backstage actor dramatics, dear reader, check Backstage out. It will absolutely be worth your time and attention.
For screening information, visit the Backstage official website.
"… a real barnstormer"
