ŠRÁMY_Closer
Who lives inside us?
How do the people we love inhabit our skin once they are gone?
How does hiding protect us, how can it endanger us?
How can remembrance help us heal?
How do dancing and joy emerge in crisis to help us survive?
In ŠRÁMY_Closer Marina Mezzogiorno-Brown and Stéphanie NDuhirahe look at these questions through the lens of disco, liberation, and unspeakable loss in the LA gay community. Marina connects this greater, collective grief, rage, and tragic love to her own experiences with death.
Using costume, camp, contemporary circus (aerial rope, physical theatre), and oral history the artists weave a highly visual ode to a lost generation. It is an act of faith in the healing power of remembrance—and clubbing.
“Closer offers a beautifully unsettling spectacle. It is a funeral ritual that gently and yet wildly opens the door to step out of the mundane.”
– Hana Strejčková,
Taneční aktuality”
A Cie Pieds Perchés creation
Concept and performers :
Marina Mezzogiorno-Brown, Stéphanie NDuhirahe
Outside eyes :
Natalie Oleinik, Tay Lane
Costumes : Morgane Widmer
Light design : Zuzana Režná
Text development : Tay Lane
Sound design : Roman Džačár
Production: Schmilblick spolek
Interviewees :
Donna Brown, Jeffrey Polk, Philip Debolske, Lisa Landworth, Nils
Invisible influences :
Annalise Kjolhede, Bob Cordes, Frank, Jimmy, Darryl, Donna Tingler, Roger, Janet Reed, Jane Erskine, Heather, Grammie, Vittorio, Rosa, Victoria, Ginger, Freddie, Sylvester, Keith, Felix.
If I’ve forgotten anyone in this text, I haven’t forgotten you in my heart.
I was conceived in love in 1987, at the memorial for Bob (not funeral, mom says).
He was an artist and an architect. He, like so infinitely many, was killed by complications from AIDS.
This is a page from Bob's journal, gifted to my mother by his family. "Frustration resounding and / abounding sounding rock and / roll vivaldi new and confused / used tonight bright stars are / burning up after burning bright."
Lots of the people I love are dead. They are still really fun though.
The show treats heavy shit with tenderness, satire, some sadness, and always big love.
Some things never change.
That's why we have to remember.
Photos by Vojtěch Brtnický and František Ortmann
