February 8th
I am.
So.
Stuck.
Still.
Solutions…?
"A rehearsal of Response" is a one-women physical theater performance inspired by Jacques Derrida, Ranjana Khanna, Monica Bill Barns, Martin Zimmermann, and Mooky Cornish. The piece engages with the question, what is your responsibility to the other? What does it mean to respond to something you cannot identify? Through playful encounters with suitcases, scarfs, confetti, and jello, the performance addresses the seeming oppositions between comedy and gravity, freedom and entrapment, mind and body.
In addition to the performance itself, I wrote two essays and an analysis of my performance through which I investigate how creating physical theater informs and challenges an understanding of the human and the political as defined in western political frameworks by reason, autonomy, and self representation. I explore what politics would mean in conversation with distinct definitions of representation suggested by Jacques Derrida, Peter Brook, and Shoshana Felman among others. Finally, I include a selection of my process journal entries from the last five months which share moments of personal discovery both in moments of struggle and celebration. My primary objective has been to explore my own artistic process through experimenting with how I devise performance work. Through this endeavor, I have overcome paralysis and fear to uncover a love for physical theater that I will continue to cultivate."
"You can only take if you are prepared to give. And giving is not an investment. It is not a day at the bargain counter. It is a total risk. Of everything. Of you. Of who you think you are. Of who you think you you’d like to be. Of where you think you’d like to go. Of everything. Forever. Forever. " James Baldwin
Senior project directors: Jodi Baker and Netta van Vliet
