The Performance of the King in Yellow.
I never would have taken the summer job doing all the little things, like supplying props, designing the signs, making the masks, and ushering, for the stage play of The King In Yellow if I’d known the rumors of the effects of reading the second act. Not that I believed in the supernatural, but I would have thought few would attend, for fear of being taken down into the depths of psychosis after their last sane intermission of their lives. And I would have assumed the reverse placebo effect would make all involved with the production act out every shadowy wildness in their psyches they didn’t want to take responsibility for. But I’m a guy who keeps commitments. And I’d signed on to rent a golden-painted attic with a slanted roof and a tiny closet along the floor, which was two blocks from the theater for three months. It took the last of my money, and I had a drawing habit to support, so I had no choice. I decided to embrace the adventure with a sense of glee. It would be macabre fun to watch the world around me go mad. I’d draw the distraught actors, the intrepid director, the fainted audience, and sell the art around Paris to the locals and tourists, as the event would no doubt garner some voyeuristic fame. About cheese. Dr. Gorgonzola of the Ripening Caves.
Dr. Gorgonzola, pale in the sun, cringes from its rays. Her globular hands curd themselves so tightly against the sky, clenched upon her anger, they drip residual whey. Dr. Gorgonzola experiences non-linearly, as a semi-individuated part of her species. Momentarily she is nearly overcome by the moisture of remembering the atmosphere the day she was created by love centuries ago, in the Holy Ripening Caves. The upstart bacteria Starter. The homeland of the mold combination unique to the world. The past folded into her culture, which has continued from one batch of cheese to another since the inception. She lives her life fully in all those times at once. As all of those things together. All that life-force intense. Friday, March 27 • 2:30pm - 3:45pm at &Now I'll be on the Friends of JEF Books panel. I hope if you're in the area, near LA, and enjoy multimedia and texts that break beyond the boundaries, you'll come to the Festival in a couple weeks. It's great fun, inspiring, a good way to meet new people in the community and network.
For my part of the event, I'll be playing with the somatics of a short story, with relaxed audience participation as people act it out on their own, feeling it in their bodies as it's intended to be felt. Based on the science of Place Theory, this story begins:
"Remember when the death of award-winning journalist, Claire Daleen was in the news a couple years ago? She was found decapitated, with her ears cut off. And then – nothing. There was case that just got started two years ago but was thrown out of court. There were lots of deaths at that time, but only a few rumors online about how they were all related to the court case. Then, the journalists who put those pieces up died too, and all references were scrubbed from the net. I couldn’t let it go. I had a suspicion." At Bareknuckle Poets. |
Tantra Bensko
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