For a theater lovers, a happy story about life in the theater

For a theater lovers, here’s a happy story about life in the theater.

One of my favorite moments in theater is when Théâtre de Complicité, a French troupe, were doing a show called Mnemonic in New York City. This is when I was living there. It was such an amazing example of simple storytelling that brought in centuries of context and brought in so many skills that they made it look easy.

There is this simple wooden folding chair and what they did with it was – you could manipulate the chair so that it walked like a human, like a giant puppet – and people were able to make it go over their bodies like a man climbing a mountain, like that dance troupe, Pelopolis, and it was amazing!

Stunning and exquisite in its simplicity!

But also I’m realizing now as I’m thinking, one of the things that it talked about was the origins of humanity and the silliness around the boundaries, because the story had to do with finding one of the first ice men that had been buried in a glacier for centuries.

But you couldn’t say that this person was Russian or Finnish or Swedish or Icelandic, whatever, because that [labelling] didn’t even exist back then, right?

It was just an early human and they were linking that to all of the little gradations that we use today to label and sometimes limit ourselves.

I’m Gin Hammond and I’m Living IncogNegro.  I’m glad you’re here and we’re on this journey together.  Find me on instagram here.  Send me a note here.