At the end of “Prelude” – free, outdoors, 30 minutes long, and awesome; put together by some of the legendary lights of New York’s avant garde to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the pioneering, immersive theater company, En Garde Arts  – a man in an automated wheelchair made his away across the plaza in Fort Greene.  

A bevy of fairies (or maybe oversized bugs), costumed by Machine Dazzle, had just finished frolicking. Two New York couples who each had met at a New York café, had spent most of their time in endless bickering (“I thought you loved me.”/ “I do love you”/”Yes you love me but don’t love me in that way.”/”I never pretended to love you in that way”/”I can’t go on in life without being loved in that way.”/”What do you mean ‘in that way”?”) But they had declared a truce just long enough for a climactic song about their love for New York City composed by the Lazours. (“let’s start with the blossoms on the tree. Let’s start with the people passing by…”)

I thought at first the man had just wandered in; the show was free and open to the public, after all. But he made his way to the exact of the 300 Ashland plaza, right in front of the performers, and started speaking. I realized this was Charles L. Mee, the 88-year-old playwright who had authored the text of this play. What he had to say does a far better job than I could of describing it:

“I like plays that are not too neat, too too finished, too presentable. My own plays are broken, filled with sharp edges, jagged, filled with things that take sudden turns, veer off in sickening turns, careen into each other, smash up. That feels that feels good to me. That feels like my life. And then I I like to put these things, these chaotic stuff, With some sense of struggle remaining into a classical form, a Greek form, or a beautiful dance theater piece, or some other effort at civilization.”

In this case, I’d say, a beautiful dance theater. “Prelude” will be performing again tonight and Thursday night at 7:30 p.m. at 300 Ashland Plaza.