#PickoftheWeek | Chocolate Factory Screens No Script Comedy Film
BY QEDC It's In Queens
There was no script. There was no audience. There was no end in sight for Covid. Roll ’em!
The Chocolate Factory Theater presents the United States premiere of The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be in Long Island City on Friday, Nov. 4, and Saturday, Nov. 5.
To create this new feature film, Andrea Kleine and Bobby Previte moved into the Chocolate Factory with an air mattress, a toaster oven, frozen Trader Joe’s meals, and an inflatable kiddie pool for bathing in December 2020. The venue was closed due to government-imposed Covid restrictions, so they ad-libbed monologues in improvised costumes to an empty house every night for two weeks.
The result is a comedy about living during Covid and performing without an audience.
Both screenings are at 7 pm. Tickets cost $15.
Kleine is an author, choreographer, and performance artist from Richmond, Virginia. She’s a five-time MacDowell fellow and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow.
Previte, who hails from Niagara Falls, is a drummer, composer, and bandleader whose work explores the nexus between notated and improvised music. A Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2012, he won the 2015 Greenfield Prize for music.
The OBIE- and Bessie-winning Chocolate Factory runs a multi-use facility in a 7,500-square-foot industrial building at 38-33 24th St. in LIC’s Dutch Kills. Though not germane to The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be, the campus includes a 99-seat flexible performance space with a sprung-wood dance floor, a 2,000-square-foot rehearsal space, an office, and on-site nursery for artists with small children. It was first established at 5-49th Ave. in 2005, but the nonprofit secured a $3.8 million grant in 2017 to create the new facility.
Top image: Andrea Kleine; bottom image: The End Is Not What I Thought It Would Be