The art scandal that inspired a theatre blockbuster
Blockbuster international theatre is here.
A painting sells for millions, then turns out to be a fake. ROHTKO takes that scandal, one of the art world’s juiciest, and turns it into a spectacular piece of European theatre. It arrives at His Majesty’s Theatre this February as part of Perth Festival 2027.
The Story
In 2004, a couple paid $8.3 million for a painting they believed was a genuine Mark Rothko. Years later, it was revealed to be a fake, painted by a maths teacher from Queens who later fled New York for China.
ROHTKO takes inspiration from that scandal and runs with it, moving between fact and fiction, past and present, artists and forgers, the art market and the digital world. It’s part art-world thriller, part philosophical puzzle and completely unpredictable. The deeper you go, the harder it becomes to know what, or who, to believe.
Art scandals happen all the time. Forgeries get caught, headlines run for a week and the world moves on. But what happens when the fake outlives the scandal, when it becomes the thing people can’t stop talking about decades later? ROHTKO turns that question into something you don’t just hear about. You feel it, live, in the room.
A note from our Artistic Director
‘There is always a moment when I know a show simply has to come to Perth. ROHTKO had a hundred of them. It is cinematic, deeply integrated with technology and constantly playing with what is live and what is mediated, but at its heart are breathtaking performances.
If you love a cinematic blockbuster, a great crime thriller or losing yourself in a punchy Netflix series, see ROHTKO. You don’t need to know anything about contemporary theatre or Mark Rothko to be completely swept up in it.
I am so thrilled to welcome director Łukasz Twarkowski as he makes his Australian debut with this electrifying exploration of art and legacy. Please don’t miss it.’
Anna Reece, Perth Festival Artistic Director
Want to hear more from the director? Read an interview with Łukasz Twarkowski in The Guardian.
Who is Mark Rothko?
Mark Rothko was an abstract artist who brought vast fields of colour to life. Deep reds, luminous oranges, inky blacks. His paintings seem simple at first, then slowly pull you in.
Rothko believed art could reach somewhere beyond words, something emotional, physical and deeply human. But his paintings also became highly coveted commodities, selling for millions and fuelling a world of money, status, authenticity and desire.
ROHTKO dives into that intoxicating world in a wildly inventive European production where art, technology, money and deception collide.
Why is ROHTKO spelled that way?
Spelling mistake or intentional statement? The scrambled spelling is at the heart of the show, playing with the relationship between the fake and the original. It works the same way famous brands are imitated with counterfeit names like Adibas or Dolce & Banana. It also draws on the idea of typoglycaemia: that we can often read a word even when its letters are jumbled, as long as the first and last letters stay in place.
So if your brain still reads ROHTKO as ROTHKO, does the difference really matter? And if it does, what makes one more valuable than the other?
See it for yourself
ROHTKO plays 5 – 13 Feb at His Majesty’s Theatre.
Also coming to Perth Festival 2027: Operation:Orfeo, a visual opera told entirely through light, image and sound. Full program drops 29 Oct.