Endless confusion as to whether it is real or fake... ‘Roscoe’, a play that mixes time and space

On the stage in darkness, two huge screens greet the audience before the actors even appear. Red lights and strange images flicker over a Chinese restaurant set reminiscent of a movie set, and the narration in the play, “A true story about a fake painting,” makes the audience curious about how to tell the real thing through a fake.

This cool introduction, where the boundary between theater and film is blurred, instantly draws the audience into a world of deep confusion and thought.

The play 'ROHTKO', directed by Ukashi Tvarkovsky, had its domestic premiere at the LG Signature Hall at LG Arts Center in Seoul on the 13th.

This work, which started from the 'Mark Rothko forgery scandal', which is considered the most shocking incident in the history of the art world, did not stop at simply digging into the truth battle surrounding a large amount of fake paintings.

The play is based on the true story of a painting sold for about $8.3 million by New York's Knodler Gallery in 2004, which was revealed seven years later to be a forgery by unknown Chinese artist Feixian Chen, and places characters from different time periods on one stage.

Several characters are intertwined across time and space, including Mark Rothko, a painter in conflict with his wife Mel in the 1960s, Domenico de Sole, a collector and his wife who paid a large sum of money to buy forgeries thinking they were Rothko's works, and two actors who meet today at a Chinese restaurant while preparing to audition for Rothko's film. In the process, the boundaries between original and copy, real and fake, collapse.

The media production that cleverly crosses the stage and the large screen further maximizes this boundary-breaking.

The huge screen in front of the audience is not simply an auxiliary device that illuminates the stage.

With large glass windows, a fish tank, and a dining table, the stage resembles a real-life Chinese restaurant. Filming crews with cameras are busy moving around inside and outside the set, reminiscent of an actual movie shooting site. Even the detailed facial expressions of the actors and the scenery in blind spots that cannot be seen by the audience are captured on camera and projected on the screen in real time.

There is a strange tension between the scene seen live and the image on the screen.

The audience is faced with a choice between the actual stage in front of them and the movie-like image on the screen at the same time. Depending on which side you look at, your gaze is divided, and sometimes the facial expressions of the close-up characters on the screen are more intense than those on the actual stage.

The set on stage continuously and organically transforms from a restaurant to a gallery to an apartment, breaking down the boundaries of time and space.

The concert hall is instantly transformed into a huge movie theater as a real-time camera captures a scene like a movie and transmits it on a large screen, magnificent techno music like the original soundtrack (OST), and red and blue neon lights come together.

Due to the long running time of about 4 hours, voices of concern came from the audience before the performance. However, the work leaves a strong visual impression as if you have watched a movie rather than simply watching a long play.

Beyond the visual spectacle, what penetrates the center of the play is the heavy question, “What is real and what is the definition of art?”

The play's question, "Why is the painting (a forgery) still the same as it is, but is it no longer beautiful?" contains a sharp reflection on whether the value of a work of art lies in the work itself, or in the price tag given by the market and the artist's signature.

The development of characters pouring out narrations to the audience and moving freely through time also makes the audience question existing beliefs.

Philosophical topics such as whether a true ‘first’ can exist and, if the concept of an original exists, what it proves are heavily laid out throughout the stage.

The highlight of the work is by far the final scene amid chaotic moving sets and pounding beats.

The production catches the audience off guard as the characters on stage disappear all at once and are then completely sucked into the screen.

The audience was filled with a fresh shock as the curtain ended, leaving a question mark as to whether what the audience was seeing from the beginning was the vivid original on stage or a reproduction on the screen.

Today, when artificial intelligence (AI) has become widespread and anyone can create images that are difficult to distinguish from the original with a single command line, the questions asked by 'Roscoe' seem even more sharp.

This play, which asks questions about art in an era where the boundaries between real and fake, original and copy, have been erased, continues until the 15th.