THERE IS SO MUCH MAD IN ME
April 22-April 24 presented by testperformancetest
Austin Ventures Studio at Ballet Austin (AUSTIN TEXAS Y’ALL!!!)
“Faye Driscoll is the future” – Elizabeth Zimmer, Metro
Driven by extreme emotional states and voyeuristic urges Faye Driscoll’s There is so much mad in me explores shifting states of mob-consciousness as choreography. Nine powerhouse performers slide from one extreme to the next revealing parallel universes lodged within familiar states of mind.
There is so much mad in me, asks how we feel and connect in this time of over stimulation and look at me distraction. Investigating ritual from torture to religious rapture, There is so much mad in me lives within the similarities between polar extremes. What are the fine lines between the abject and the sublime, voyeurism and empathy, entertainment and reality?
Faye Driscoll devises multi-dimensional dance dramas that engender complex experience by blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, arousal and disgust, fun and violence, spectacle and authenticity. She strives to create new forms of theatrical experience aimed to provoke feeling, stimulate the senses and activate the mind. The result is often under-the-skin, hysterical, awkward and devastating.
“Driscoll…has a reputation for serious provocation. She makes spectators squirm, and there’s an uneasy edge to the laughter she elicits in exploring our dark pent up, raging urges.” Deborah Jowitt, Village Voice
“In a desperate attempt to keep the overstimulation going, performers switch gears from violence to sex to vanity to voyeurism. Everything is an aggressive action, and when momentum lulls, chinks of panic show through what might otherwise be mere boredom. Dancers look at each other as if suddenly naked. Their addiction to zest, made deliberately transparent in the moments-between, reminds us that our cultural obsession with invasive TV and Twitter outbursts is akin to the snake eating its own tail, the cycle feeding itself.” Mary Love Hodges, Dance Magazine
“Driscoll understands that at the heart of live theater are emotional distances (perspective, we might call it if this were a painting). She beams a light on theatrical self-fashioning, and lets you feel the scraps of being fluttering in the dark.” Apollinare Scherr, Arts Journal
