Intrigue

A theater director struggles with his work and the women in his life as he creates a life-size replica of New York City inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Theater director Caden Cotard is mounting a new play. Fresh off of a successful production of "Death of a Salesman", he has traded in the suburban blue-hairs and regional theater of Schenectady for the cultured audiences and bright footlights of Broadway. Armed with a MacArthur grant and determined to create a piece of brutal realism and honesty, something into which he can put his whole self, he gathers an ensemble cast into a warehouse in Manhattan's theater district. He directs them in a celebration of the mundane, instructing each to live out their constructed lives in a small mock-up of the city outside. As the city inside the warehouse grows, Caden's own life veers wildly off the tracks. The shadow of his ex-wife Adele, a celebrated painter who left him years ago for Germany's art scene, sneers at him from every corner. Somewhere in Berlin, his daughter Olive is growing up under the questionable guidance of Adele's friend Maria. He's helplessly driving his marriage to actress Claire into the ground. Sammy Barnathan, the actor Caden has hired to play himself within the play, is a bit too perfect for the part, and is making it difficult for Caden to revive his relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel. Meanwhile, his therapist, Madeline Gravis, is better at plugging her best-seller than she is at counseling him. His second daughter, Ariel, is disabled. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions, one by one. As the years rapidly pass, Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece. Populating the cast and crew with doppelgangers, he steadily blurs the line between the world of the play and that of his own deteriorating reality. As he pushes the limits of his relationships, both personally and professionally, a change in creative direction arrives in Millicent Weems, a celebrated theater actress who may offer Caden the break he needs.

Life is looking bleak for theater director Caden Cotard. His wife and daughter have left him, his therapist is not helping him with his problems, and a strange disease is causing his body to shut down. As part of his new play, Caden decides to create a life-size replica of NYC inside a warehouse.—yusufpiskin

The idea here is mainly Death, the agony in every one's life is accompanied by sudden moments of mockery even regarding the sources of pain in other characters' lives as well as the main character's life, who finally notices that each other character is not an extra but a main character in his own mind, or world. the idea behind the events were about to express the triviality that lurks in the act of a man trying to portray himself while he is portraying himself, which results in a man sitting painting in front of a tableau, inside the tableau a man is sitting painting in front of a tableau ...etc. As has always been, the idea of death, when it rules, makes every thing looks pale and useless>> as it is. No euphemism is cared for, and no simplification for the mundane is employed.