I recently had an incredible creative experience, commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Prop Theatre. The Storefront Project asked six Chicago-based directors to choose anything but a typical play and devise a new project, tailor-made for both the MCA Chicago and Prop Thtr, demonstrating Chicago theatre’s uncanny ability to pop up anywhere. The prompt for this project was incredibly open - choose something, anything (that isn’t a script) from the Public Domain, and devise a performance. This project was the opportunity to really showcase my style, my method, and my heart.
After spending a month sampling the texts in the public domain, I found myself fixating not on a piece of literature -- but an artist whose work I had encountered while immersed in an entirely different project. Antonio Ligabue -- the wild man of the river Po. I was stricken by Ligabue’s tragic and passionate life, complicated by a troubled childhood and mental illness, displayed in violently vivid colors on traditional canvases, barn walls, and long-eroded tree trunks. Taking note of the symbols and themes present in his body of work, I turned back to the public domain to find something that I could structure a piece of theatre around. I settled on a children’s poem called The Nine Lives Of A Cat - A Tale Of Wonder, By Charles Henry Bennett (1860).
I visited Ligabue’s former home while on a project in Piacenza, Italy and gathered primary and secondary accounts of his life and work. I employed friends to translate texts and interviews from the local language into English. I shared this dramaturgical work with four artists whom I trusted to explore Ligabue’s life with sensitivity, beauty, and vulgarity.- a visual artist/designer, a composer/classical musician, a two-spirit Latinx poet, and a circus performer. Together we created a complex piece of promenade performance that allowed the audience multiple access points into the mind and practice of someone who experiences neurodivergence, sensory sensitivities, and gender dysphoria, depicting how artistic expression can be a shield to process trauma against, and an anchor with which we can hold tight to our humanity.
I facilitated stimulating conversations with each of the artists for 6 months, and we circulated our ideas and visions for the piece. We identified the moments in his biography we wanted to illuminate, and abstracted them into larger than life vignettes and dreamy waltzes.
I rehearsed with the artists mostly in pairs for three weeks, devising and staging along the way, allowing for sharp spotlights on their individual practices woven throughout the ensemble performance. I pieced together the script from improvisations, biographical information, verbatim interviews, and writing from the team. I visualized a human/cat playground with live painting of cat murals that the designer and composer helped breathe into life. I joined the composer in experimenting with children’s toys, kitchen utensils, and classical arias around which the movement of the piece could be formed.
It was incredibly challenging work, and we felt duty bound to create a piece that painted Ligabue’s life with compassion, dignity and beauty. I feel that to date it is the one of the most comprehensive snapshots of the tools I employ when creating new work, as well as a clear demonstration of the clarity and finesse that have come into my practice as a result of my directing and producing work in Chicago.
