For nearly 40 years, En Garde Arts has been producing site-specific shows in unusual places all over New York City. Among my favorites, from long ago, was JP Morgan Saves the Nation, a one-act musical about the infamous financial Panic of 1907 (with a score by Jonathan Larson, who conducted the band) that En Garde Arts staged outdoors along Wall Street near Morgan’s own bank building. Museums, saloons and Central Park Lake are among the diverse sites where the company has premiered works reflecting their surroundings.
An historic mission into outer space is woven into the autobiographical story that creator-writer-performer Jared Mezzocchi relates in 73 Seconds. Quite appropriately, En Garde Arts presents Mezzocchi’s new solo show inside a 64-seat planetarium in the Lower Eastside Girl’s Club, located several blocks east of Tompkins Square Park.
A highly personal piece, 73 Seconds regards the middle-aged Mezzocchi’s past and present relationship with his beloved mother, Rosemary, a former eighth grade algebra teacher who currently lives with Alzheimer’s. Memories and their loss are key to his story. When he was graduating from high school, Rosemary casually told Mezzocchi how she once was vetted by NASA to be the first teacher ever to rocket into space. Then Rosemary became pregnant with him and was unable to train for the mission that proved to be the ill-fated Challenger space shuttle that exploded after a 73-second flight in 1986.
Or so Mezzocchi believes. By the time he got around to questioning Rosemary closely about it, her memory already was deteriorating, and he never cleared up that mystery. The overnight death of Mezzocchi’s dad, who suffered an aneurism in 2004, is another significant thread to his 70-minute story.
Mezzocchi has enjoyed an award-winning career as a multimedia artist and director associated with notable Off Broadway works such as Vietgone and Russian Troll Farm. Directed and co-developed by Obie-winner Aya Ogawa, the complex presentation of 73 Seconds exemplifies Mezzocchi’s fascination with technology both high and low. A modest industrial-style table, a ladder, a projection screen, an overhead projector, microphones, cameras and tape decks are assembled under the planetarium dome to realize Mezzocchi’s performance. Pre-recorded video, a live camera feed, photos from family scrapbooks, overhead projections of the heavens and, of course, footage of the Challenger accident illustrate the narrative. Mezzocchi at times plays old-school cassette tape recordings in which he speaks both as himself and as Rosemary during various years. The dramatic blend of visuals and sound proves highly effective, so by all means let’s credit Ogawa’s supervision and the production designers: Calvin Anderson (scenography), Ryan Gamblin (sound), Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (light/projection) and Vinny Mraz (technology).
A burly fellow with a mane of black hair and a stubbled chin, wearing checked flannels and a sweatshirt, Mezzocchi looks like a cool science professor and talks in a conversational manner. He is not much of an actor, however. After a while, his performance becomes plodding, and his replication of Rosemary’s Yankee-accented voice is not persuasive. Worse than Mezzocchi’s non-acting is his streak of self-pity that grows wider as the story progresses. What likely is meant to be a celebration of his mother’s untested greater powers and the evidently loving relationship they share gradually darkens into a melancholy account of an accomplished woman’s fading sensibilities and his own grief and frustration over their inability to communicate.
Its artistic shortcomings aside, 73 Seconds remains an ambitious work that is representative of the smartly staged and novel theatergoing experiences that En Garde Arts provides in places you never even knew existed.
73 Seconds opened May 4, 2026 and runs to May 18 at the Lower Eastside Girls Club Planetarium. Tickets and information: engardearts.org
