On Tuesday, September 9, the New Canaan Playhouse will offer audiences a rare cinematic experience: the 1922 silent film Down to the Sea in Ships presented with a brand-new, fully improvised live score by the Brooklyn-based trio The Order of the Illusive.
“It felt fitting to showcase a film from the very year the Playhouse first opened its doors,” said Luke Parker Bowles, who has been shaping the Playhouse’s mix of art-house and blockbuster programming. “Down to the Sea in Ships is a romantic drama about the 19th-century Massachusetts whaling community, and it carries both a regional resonance and a cinematic legacy worth celebrating.”
A Band that Makes Films Sing
The Order of the Illusive—made up of guitarist and electronics player Geoff Gersh, multi-instrumentalist Bradford Reed, and bassist Zach Layton—has been creating live film scores together for more than a decade.
“We’ve been doing this kind of live film scoring stuff for about 13 years now,” said Gersh. “We don’t do it full-time, but all of us are very active musicians in the New York City and Hudson Valley music scene. This is one of several projects we’re involved in, and it’s one of the most fun.”
Their instrumentation is as unconventional as their approach. Reed plays an instrument he invented, called a pencilina—a hybrid of guitar and bass that he plucks, bows, and plays percussively, often while simultaneously handling drums. Layton performs on a massive 17-string bass, while Gersh describes himself as the one with “the most normal instrument” in the group. All three run their instruments through electronic effects to shape a constantly shifting soundscape.
Improvisation at the Core
Unlike traditional silent film accompaniment, their performances are never scripted.
“One thing I want to be clear about—we improvise,” Gersh explained. “Every film we play to is all completely improvised in the moment. We’ll watch the film ahead of time just to get familiar with the pacing, but we treat the film as another musician, as if we’re playing with it. The images and the rhythms on screen tell us how to play.”
The result, Gersh says, is something both rooted in tradition and boldly new. “There’s a kind of musical language people expect from silent films—solo piano, organ, music that mirrors every emotion on screen. We honor the past, but not literally. We like to go against the grain sometimes. It’s more about creating an overall mood than telling the audience exactly what to feel in each moment.”
A Special Connection to the Playhouse
The choice of film adds another layer of meaning. Down to the Sea in Ships was the very first movie shown at the Playhouse when it opened in the early 1920s.
“When the theater approached us, they told me that this film was the one that opened the Playhouse a hundred years ago,” Gersh said. “We’ve never done something like this before playing to the first film ever shown in a theater, now on its centennial. That makes it a really special performance for us.”
Parker Bowles agrees. “This is exactly the kind of thing we dreamed of doing when we reopened,” he said. “Yes, we’ll always have blockbusters and independent films, but the Playhouse is about art—with a capital A. There are four National Theatre Live movies coming up that will be really sensational. We want to do things that are unexpected, that make people stop and think, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen anything like that before.’”
A One-Night-Only Experience
The screening is expected to sell out quickly, with New Canaan residents encouraged to reserve their seats early. For Gersh and his bandmates, it’s a chance to share their adventurous style with a new audience.
“We’re very, very excited,” Gersh said. “It looks like an amazing theater, and for us, it’s a chance to do something unique—to bring a silent film alive in the same place it first played, but in a completely new way.”
To purchase tickets please visit: playhouse.cinemalab.com/home/.
