'How to see things the way they really are'

March 9th, 2018

7pm
Arena Theatre, UC Davis

We enter the room . Chairs are set up in a slight horseshoe shape.

The audience faces a set that consists of props and a screen upon
which static and abstractions of static are projected. The dominant
colors are blue in the projection and black, white and red within the
set elements
The floor is painted in a way that suggests that black paint ahs
been painted over the outside including the area that the audiences
sits on and the center, which the performer acts upon are black and
separating us is a white ring with frayed edges.
Red 2x4 wood logs are laying in a pile, a hammer, 4 longer 2x4x16
form a square with an opening downstage right. Around the square that
the 2x4's form are unevenly shaped ceramic forms that have items
hand-drawn on them: plants for example. An amplifier and microphone
are set up outside of the square, the mic lays on the floor within
the square. A red chair is in the square.

The performer enters upon a cue in the sound from outside the
theatre. He swiftly moves into the space at the opening, and closes
it behind him. He wears male gender typical clothing, shoes, a suit-
jacket, a white shirt and a medium length wig.
He carefully places himself in the middle of the floor prone, his
head turned away from the audience. The projection begins a digital
clock. An alarm rings, he gets up and runs in place. He repeats this
several times.

Throughout the piece the performer turns into an entertainer that is

disrupted by a shy personality.
The play centers around juxtaposition of sexy/pedestrian,
extroverted/introverted, male/female, human/animal, alive/dead,
inside/outside, audience/performer, victim/perpetrator.

He plays with repetition: he repeatedly gets up, runs and lays back
down; he repeatedly gets shot, later as he reappears as a beaver in a
huge non-shaped indeterminable furry brown mass, attempting to pile
all the red 2x4's into a pile.

He seems to be working through issues of gender and social acceptance

and social cruelty.
Multipe personalities are exposed to the viewer, the actor is killed
by the audience, the other around him. He seeks to strike back,
nailing three nails into a 2x4 and trying to swing it at the
audience. Which is a moment many audience members perceived as truly
frightening.