Ingredients for a performance feast:
Pleasure in language. Pleasure in silence. Pleasure in art for art’s sake. But also pleasure in meaning and in urgency.
A body in space. A necessary action. Two bodies; a dialectical connection. Three bodies; a rapport and a witness. Necessary actions. A multiplicity of meanings.
The political that is personal that is political, that endlessly travels across these boundaries, or that lives there, on that thin line and calmly seeps through its pores, in both directions.
It breaks rules. Exposes taboos. Plays with clichés.
It defies gender-normative identities. It questions identity.
Patriarchy is present and is challenged… to say the least.
At the core of it: No hierarchy.
A room full of equals.
A stage full of equals… equals that deal equitably with the audience, regardless of what the fiction recounts, of what the game entails.
Surprises… of all sorts!
It shakes you, destabilizes what you “know” and Knowledge in general; that which is prescribed as “Truth.”
It is raw, it is real, it is happening with you in the room and can only be experienced in the “here and now.” It is open to a multiplicity of heres and nows depending on the realities, perceptions, localities… of those present.
It grips you from the gut and doesn’t let go. It travels across your nervous system, all the way up to your brain, and only then do you know what hit you. It could happen in a split second, but could also take days, weeks, months.
Sometimes, it is just there, exposed, for you to see, to calmly perceive, analyze, understand with your intellect; but then it goes on to invade your emotions and settle there for a while… Just when you thought you got it! Just when you thought you could control what it could do to you.
After the feast:
Real conversations spark… immediately. Later on… with other people. Or in your head!
A thought lingers… a feeling…
Sometimes, a decision… sometimes, change.