by Geetha Reddy & Brian Tolle
Film
Artist’s Statement
When approaching a script, I generally do a lot of storyboard sketches to get a feel for the scale of the scenes and to give me something to start editing. Early on in the process of translating the brilliant Obit stageplay to a film, it became clear that the juxtapositions of editing would give us ways to illustrate Henry’s state of mind that would be difficult to pull off onstage. Working with writer Geetha Reddy and actor George Maguire, we broke down when Henry was speaking lucidly and when he was inside of his mind. Through wardrobe, lensing, and light we give the audience subtle clues so they can feel that the character is being honest with them. Sometimes we cut across three days of filming during a sentence, and I find the effect brings out a piercing performance that makes me cry like a child every time I watch the film.
– Brian Tolle, director, Obit
Geetha Reddy is a playwright and filmmaker working in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her plays include Mahābhārata (Oakland Theater Project); Far, Far Better Things (Shotgun Players/ TheatreFIRST); Hela (with Lauren Gunderson, TheatreFIRST); Safe House (San Francisco Playhouse); and Blastosphere (with Aaron Loeb, Central Works). Her plays Me Given You, Girl in a Box, and On a Wonderverse were part of the Playwrights Foundation’s In the Rough reading series. Safe House and On a Wonderverse were featured in the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. She has been commissioned by TheatreWorks, San Francisco Playhouse, Oakland Theater Project, Shotgun Players, Crowded Fire Theater, the Gerbode Foundation, and PlayGround. Her plays have also appeared in the San Francisco Fringe Festival, Santa Rosa Quickies Festival, Best of PlayGround Festival, Just Theatre Lab series, Crowded Fire Matchbox series, and TheatreWorks New Works Festival. Her short film Obit appeared at LA Shorts, the NYC Independent Film Festival, Bend Film Festival, GI Film Festival, and many others. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and an alumni Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation.
Filmmaker Brian Tolle spent twenty-five years in San Francisco working in feature film VFX. He crafts small films that tend to focus on characters ruminating on their current circumstances. He has also written and directed a feature-length film that was mostly a train wreck. He fled to Chicago in 2021 where he pushes the boundaries of what is technically possible with real-time visual effects and mixed-reality storytelling.