The Brig

The film is the record of a stage play. The play is called The Brig. Kenneth H. Brown wrote the text. The company staging it is The Living Theatre. The play was put on in New York in 1963. The account is set in a military prison. The place is a marine corps jail in Japan. The time is 1957. The play follows a single day. Through that day the drills, the punishments and the pressure go on. The company’s auditorium is then closed over taxes. Jonas Mekas moves to keep the play from being lost. The night after the closing he films the whole performance straight through. Three sixteen millimetre cameras were used for it. The sixty eight minute film took the grand prize for documentary at Venice. Jonas Mekas’s American film was finished in 1964.