Billy Ken Roht

A raucous, angry exorcism of relationships and assorted fears, shadowed by the Big One: the plague of AIDS.

Quotations From a Ruined City was first performed as a workshop production for the Los Angeles Festival in a former shoe store on Hollywood Boulevard. The production subsequently moved to a vacant pajama factory in New York's meatpacking district and went on to be presented by multiple European presenters. It was Abdoh's final work. "Quotations from a Ruined City is a sort of apocalyptic follies: an evening of song, dance, poetry, nudity and torture set in a world whose center has clearly long ceased to hold. Created and directed by the gifted young theatrical cult artist Reza Abdoh, the work is a kaleidoscopic catalogue of images of decay and destruction that range through the centuries and around the globe."--New York Times, 1994.

The story of a beautiful young Russian violin virtuoso who arrives in New York in nineteen-thirteen and quickly falls in love with a demimondain, who introduces her to the speakeasies, opium dens, and dark places of the City. Rebecca's experiences with opium intertwine with her obsession for the stranger until she cannot separate one passion from the other. This leads her inexorably to a terrible fall from grace and an indeterminate future. [Overview courtesy of IMDB]