ABOUT THE PROJECT

LOGLINE
A prodigy trained to perform for everyone learned, in the last place he expected, what it means to simply be in tune.

SYNOPSIS
RESTRUNG is a one-man show written and performed by violinist Vijay Gupta—a 60-minute work of theater in which he plays live and speaks, inhabiting the full arc of his life story on stage. Born to Bengali immigrant parents in upstate New York, Gupta became the youngest musician ever to join the Los Angeles Philharmonic at nineteen. For more than a decade he performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl under Gustavo Dudamel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Zubin Mehta—until, at the height of his career, he walked away. The show is the story of what drove him out, and what he found on the other side.

What he found was Skid Row. And the LA County jail. And a locked psychiatric ward, where a patient listened to Gupta play the Bach Chaconne in silence and then asked: Do you see me? That question—simple, devastating, unanswerable in the way that only the most essential questions are—is the hinge on which RESTRUNG turns. Through the founding of Street Symphony, his nonprofit bringing chamber music into the places most people never go, Gupta discovered that music is not decoration but medicine; not entertainment but survival. The show moves between these worlds—the concert hall and the shelter, the prodigy’s triumph and the artist’s collapse—with live violin threading through every scene.

RESTRUNG is directed by Valerie Bischoff and produced by Steve Goldbloom in association with Vijay Gupta. The performance is developed for a twelve-city national tour. In every city, the production partners with a local organization doing Street Symphony-like work—visiting them, bringing their community into the theater as guests, and staging an after-show exchange on stage between Gupta and community members. The show programs across theater, music, and community engagement series, and is available for presenter and university engagements.

PROJECT TYPE Documentary Series (Short Form)

DIRECTOR Valerie Bischoff
PRODUCER Steve Goldbloom, Vijay Gupta

ID: 742