Acting

Jill Kroesen

Acting credits

Perfect Lives poster
7.5

Set in the American Midwest, Perfect Lives is “about” bank robbery, cocktail lounges, geriatric love, adolescent elopement, the changing of the light at sundown, et al. One of the definitive text-sound compositions of the late 20th century, it has been called "the most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s".

Perfect Lives

1984

Double Lunar Dogs poster
NR

Based on Robert Heinlein’s 1941 story “Universe,” Double Lunar Dogs presents a vision of post-apocalyptic survival aboard a “spacecraft,” travelling aimlessly through the universe, whose passengers have forgotten the purpose of their mission. As a metaphor for the nature and purpose of memory, the two main characters (portrayed by Jonas and Spalding Gray) play games with images of their past; but their efforts to restore their collective memories are futile, and they are reprimanded by the “Authority” for their attempts to recapture their past on a now-destroyed planet Earth.

Double Lunar Dogs

1984

Four American Composers: Robert Ashley poster
NR

A television documentary produced for British Television directed by Peter Greenaway.

Four American Composers: Robert Ashley

1983

135 Grand Street New York 1979 poster
4.5

New York's No Wave scene, recorded on Super-8mm, performing in a sparse downtown loft.

135 Grand Street New York 1979

2009

Music Word Fire And I Would Do It Again (Coo-Coo): The Lessons poster
NR

Buried inside the epic American opera for television, “Perfect Lives” are the boogie-woogie lessons being sold by Buddy to untalented people in the middle of America. This pilot for the series is an abstraction that plays on the meaning of life (which is unknowable) and how to make art (impossible to teach) featuring the sublime mysteries of the traveling musician.

Music Word Fire And I Would Do It Again (Coo-Coo): The Lessons

1981

Behind the camera