Venue
The Theatre Centre
Performance Dates
September 1, 2017 at 7pm
Residency Showing: On ECT
Please join us for our next Residency Showing On ECT by Suvendrini Lena with Lyon Smith and Trevor Schwellnus.
The Theatre Centre’s Residency Program is a two-year program designed to support artists in developing new work. The program facilitates a highly collaborative artistic process that embraces experimentation and learning with a wide variety of collaborators.
Residency Showings are an opportunity for our Residency artists to share their work during development and to embrace the dialogue that emerges as part of the creative process.
On (E)very (C)orner a (T)errorist by Suvendrini Lena.
On ECT is an immersive theatrical exploration of schizophrenia—a word which literally means fragmentation of the mind.
In this work-in-progress we are exploring how fragmentation and loss of identity in schizophrenia relates to the fragmentation we all experience. Schizophrenics ‘hear voices’. Schizophrenics fear loss of control over their own thoughts and bodies. Clinically we call this ‘paranoia’ but is it really such a strange idea? How does anyone actually separate internal and external voices? How do we know which voice/voices are truly our own? What makes what we say, think, or even feel, truly our own? Is any self-unfragmented?
We use the writings of Franz Fanon, archives from Queen Street Hospital from 1900-1920, and fictional characters Ether and Zephyr to explore these ideas with an immersive sound and environmental design.
This work challenges the idea that there are clear boundaries between perceptual experience in schizophrenia and the altered states we may all experience and recognize at times.
Artists include: Suvendrini Lena, Lyon Smith, Trevor Schwellnaus, Leah Cherniak and Peter Bailey.
Previous showings have also benefited from the work of Soheil Parsa, Carla B Melo, Jiv Paramsaram and Andre Stills.
Please stay tuned for more Residency Showings as the dates become announced