Performing Objects Stationed in the SubWorld, 2003, play by Carla Harryman, directed by Jim Cave , Score by Erling Wold for 25th Anniversary at The LAB, San Francisco, CA.

Costume, props and set design by A. T. / collaboration with Jeffrey Miller

photo credit: Donald Swearingen

“Performing Objects Station in the Sub World,” observes as language event the fluidity between public and psychological spaces as it also obscures normative delineations and familiar narratives about urban and suburban social spaces with non-narrative language games, lyrics, altered memories, and fantasy. The play deploys language that represents or suggests particular but not entirely classifiable relationships to social space: as mentioned above, it moves through sequence of contemplative interior psychic spaces and it also moves through aesthetic modalities—abstraction, expressionism, symbolism, and documentary—as it attempts to unsettle containing narratives about topics such as race and childhood that are often used to control and normalize human relations to social space. The language activity of the play as it bypasses, avoids, and exceeds containing social narratives, brings forth and constitutes the “Sub World…”.

–––– Carla Harryman 2008

AMY TRACHTENBERG

AMY TRACHTENBERG