A SHORT LIFE
2021
WHITE LAB
CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS
A life cycle.
Collaborative work with Daisy Mae Smith, Fatima Rodriguez and Ken Nakajima.
Collaborative work with Daisy Mae Smith, Fatima Rodriguez, Ken Nakajima and Nefeli Kentoni.
Costume Design: Daisy Mae Smith.
A REAL£100 PERFORMANCE
2020
ZOOM
PLATFORM: JOURNAL FOR THEATRE & PERFORMING ARTS
A Zoom performance making visible the labours and implicit exertions that sustain the performer-viewer relationship.
Commissioned by Platform: Journal for Theatre and Performance Art for the launch of the issue "Theatres of Labour".
Writer/Performer:
Dramaturg:
Lighting Support:
Nefeli Kentoni
Clio Unger
Melina Koutsofta
An actor enters the stage.
Correction, the actor enters the screen.
An actor enters your screens.
Apologies, one requires time and patience to readjust their tongue to the newly formed language.
You might have not paid – and it’s a good thing you haven’t –
to watch a fake actor,
perform on a fake stage,
lit by a fake lighting designer.
But you are now here.
You are now the audience.
You are now the only real thing in this exchange,
and as the only real thing, you have the responsibility to readjust your tongues and minds
to make this actor
this stage
this light designer
real.
I shall now give you 30 seconds to readjust your tongues.
These 30 seconds have costed the organizers £5
And in these 30 seconds I have done nothing.
You have done all the work.
This is how you trick the system.
Or this is how I think I trick the system.
[The system is not tricked.]
But this actor has no right to pretend they know what sacrifice is.
This actor then questions if Art has any right to pretend to know what sacrifice is?
Questions what does it even mean to sacrifice for Art?
The actor wonders:
How can the two exists without each other.
How can this bond be broken?
How can the audience be free from outside control.
free from the actor’s control.
free from this bond.
As this bond feels uneven.
While the actor is killing themselves on stage –
the audience becomes a witness to this death.
Observes this death from a safe distance.
this bond is uneven.
The actor can never be free.
Laboured Bodies can never be free.
This is an exchange.