Date of Submission

Spring 2016

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Theater

Project Advisor 1

Jack Ferver

Abstract/Artist's Statement

I make theater because it is social; a dialogical tool rooted in the interface between performer and audience. As an artist I seek community, a remedy for passivity, and movement between destruction and reification. I incorporate voice, text, sound, video, movement, politics, gender, spectacle, and tomfoolery. I believe in the necessity of others in process, practice, and performance, and I pursue joy in all I do.

This project is the product of surprise. In February 2015, the Theater Department announced that Senior Projects would need to be collaborative. In response to this challenge, the 2016 Theatre Makers met to figure out what course of action to take. This initial meeting gave way to what became the Inferno Festival: and eight-part performance festival curated by the seniors, using over 50 Bard College students and Dante’s Inferno as source material. This had never been done before.

This project is the product of patience. I chose to collaborate. It was not an easy journey, but my group mates and I made something from nothing. We disagreed, we fought, we hurt each other’s feelings, but we also showed up, worked, listened, and laughed.

This project is the product of systems. There are four nuns on stage, locked in a basement. Condemned to menial tasks, they begin to imagine a new world: one of consumption, pleasure, and karaoke. From old sisterhood break new sorority sisters, hell-bent on updating to become their best selves. We inhabit systems of violence, surveillance, sexism, and religion in order to indict them. We’re four nuns who want to walk in the sun, we’re girls who want to have fun.

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