Founded in 1999 by Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson in New York, Big Art Group soon gained international fame thanks to a specific lan- guage that combines video, cinema and digital animations, it’s the so- called real-time film. Broke House draws inspiration from Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and the film Gray Gardens (1975) by Albert and David Maysles. The latter is about an aunt and a cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy who live in a dilapidated mansion that they can no longer carry on, just like the three sisters in Checov’s play waiting to move to Moscow. The play can be interpreted on two levels: a rational and social one, dealing with the housing issue in the United States; and a more intimate one, that is, the wish to give shape to the perspectives, desires and motivations of men by confronting them with the evanescence of their sensory experiences.

The play begins with an attempt to build a human community starting from its classical household with its values and rituals. Then progressively a growing sense of anguish caused by a series of disastrous events leave the protag- onists without a precise definition. The hyper-realistic scenography, the huge screens, the multitude of web cameras represent very well a civilization dominated by image, color and technology. In the end the walls collapse with the simultaneous dissolution of the relationships between the protagonists leaving the audience in front of an unan- swered question: Can hypervision and extreme technology give new life to humanity or do they represent its final condemnation?