Paradise Island [work in progress]
Conceived and Directed by Jesse Bonnell
Choreography by Milka Djordjevich
Paradise Island is a new performance work based on texts written by Richard Foreman between the years 1973 - 1983. Part retrospective, part future bending reinvention, Paradise Island brings new life to one of America's most influential experimental artists. Compressed into an evening length performance, this project blurs the line between transference of identity and who we think we really are.
In the early days of my work with this text, the assembled company found that Foreman’s texts hold a profound, present and meaningful fluidity. One that welcomes a wide expression of human identity which then pulls apart and re-appropriates the legacy of this artist's work and American theater history, with a fresh and diverse point of view. This project hopes to bridge this divide, exposing this meaningful, field altering work to a new generation of American artists.
Richard’s work, in deep collaboration with his partner and performer, Kate Manhiem, created a downtown theater space of pure creative ecstasy: a form of paradise for both the artist and viewer. In many ways this project looks to exhume the texts, peeling away this history from the material itself, to see exactly what Foreman was saying to us through the smoke and mirrors of his staging.
This reexamination of Foreman's work is focussed on the playwright only, to this end all stage directions have been omitted from the rehearsal text. The goal is not to create anything that looks like, or feels in any way connected to a nostalgia for The Ontological Hysteric Theater. Paradise Island asks the question: What plays do we preserve as a society and what plays fade? How do I reconcile my white male-ness within the dramatic canon? How do I challenge this history and are these canonical works a part of that process?
A thirty minute section of the work was performed at the 2019 REDCAT NOW Festival.