Sunday 05 November 2023, 20:30
Free Entrance
Description of project:
The term “no man’s land” became historically significant in the First World War, when it referred to an unoccupied area between opposing armies. Interpreting the phrase ‘no man’s land’ in a metaphorical sense, I imagine a place where humans stand in their pur-est existence as animals striving to survive.
‘Songs of Absence’ is the first segment of my performance series ‘No Man’s Land’, which is based on this premise. It is based on the character Lavinia in Shakespeare’s ‘Titus An-dronicus’. Lavinia is the daughter of Titus, a general in the Roman army who is engaged in a cycle of revenge. ‘Songs of Absence’ is developed from the scene in which Lavinia has been raped, her tongue and hands were cut off by the assailants, and she is then hung from a dead tree trunk. She is stripped of her most fundamental human abilities to communicate. Yet, as she is physically pared down, her narrative and thematic im-portance escalates.
This seemingly paradoxical power of Lavinia’s silence heightens the sense of hearing. The primordial energy of the silence fills the absence of sound, like that of a wordless animal in no man’s land.