Here/There

(In progress 2016-2018)

Here/There is a multidisciplinary performance work that explores the liminal space between here and there—between home and combat, soldier and family, civilian and soldier, calm and terror, stasis and action, life and death. Conceived and directed by Janie Geiser, and developed with video designer Hsuan-Kuang, performer/veteran Jason Barlaan, and an ensemble of performers and designers, Here/There explores the body as the site of war, depository of memory, and vessel of scars. Our lens is the body: the site of battle, the repository of memory, the vessel of scars.

Here/There investigates its emotionally complex terrain through a merger of formal elements: multiple small figures, found objects and model-scale landscapes, barracks, homes; prerecorded and live-feed video, and a life-size wooden puppet. This figure will be a kind of “substitute object”, a powerful and uncanny figure standing in for one person, or for many.

We will communicate through image and gesture, by deconstructing the small actions of daily life and essentializing these actions in/through/on the bodies of the puppets. Here/There suggests the complex emotional terrain that lives in the body, long after the direct experience of war.

Here/There is in development through 2017, with a premiere in early 2018.

For more information on the project:

http://losangelesperformancepractice.org/portfolios/herethere/