Period of Animate Existence
ABOUT THE SHOW
Scott’s Role - Deviser/Performer and Assistant to choreographer
Period of Animate Existence was made by Pig Iron Theatre Company and is an inquiry into this great disruption. What is this effort for life to go on living: the language used by one generation to address another; the difference between the animate and the inanimate; and the visceral feeling that the force of life itself – what Henri Bergson called “the élan vital” – permeates our notions of minerals, plants, animals, people, and time.
Echoing the character and pacing of a 19th-century symphony, A Period of Animate Existence weaves together perspectives of children, elders, and machines in five staged movements or “hallucinatory visions.” Like a symphony, the movements are unrelated narratively, yet they complement each other sequentially in mood, tempo, and texture to produce a cumulative effect.