SLIGHT RETURN(1994) HOME
Slight Return, written, directed, and designed by John Jesurun
5 LIVE CAMERAS, ONE ROOM, FIVE SCREENS
THE ACTOR PEFORMS THE ENTIRE PIECE CONCEALED FROM THE AUDIENCE IN A 7 FT. BY 7 FT. ROOM WHICH SITS ON THE STAGE.
5 LIVE CAMERAS ARE SET IN THE WALLS OF THIS ROOM.
THE AUDIENCE SEES THE ACTION ON FIVE LARGE SCREENS HUNG IN FRONT OF THE ROOM TRANSMIT THE ACTION IN THE ROOM TO THE AUDIENCE.
Cast: Kyle DeCamp
PREMIERE: Randolph St. Gallery, Chicago, NOV. 1994
La Mama, New York, NY 1995
Technical Director: Mike Taylor
Laokoon Festival, Kampnagel Sommerfestival-Hamburg,Germany-2002
Cast: Ari Brickman.
Tech Direction: Richard Connors, Jeff Sugg
SLIGHT RETURN
John Jesurun’s 1994 “Slight Return” was originally presented at the Randolph St. Gallery in Chicago and La Mama. In this piece the actor is not physically visible by the audience. He is enclosed in a 2 meter by two meter room which sits on the stage. His performance is fed live to five video projection screens. It is more of a live experience than an experienced illusion. Its feelings live in the crack between the deeply located inner voice and the outer world of human communicative experience. The production with its hidden actor and shifting bank of video images has an immaculate stillness suggesting a world of removed but constant observation. The actor explains in an unbroken sometimes delirious monologue that the surrounding city has been leveled and all the government leaders are gone. He appears to be the only survivor, along with a cat, inside a collapsed hotel. His journey unfolds over a hundred floors in an underground world which resembles the interior of a volcano and where direction has no meaning. Intermittently he is interrupted by voices who are alternately his friends, captors or guardians. His predicament is entwined into the transmitted feelings of claustrophobia and alienation. The idea is to triply distance the performer and to suggest the nature of reality and tragedy into our media- saturated world. With no way to genuinely connect with the audience there is no way to substantiate his presence. It is a form of alienation experience in which he struggles to connect with the dark lens of a video camera that will replace reality for the viewers. The work explores the very notion of self perception and the interplay of deception, emotions, distilled language. concealment, privacy and manufactured reality.
TEXT EXCERPT-SLIGHT RETURN
8 - DIALOGUE OF THE HERMPHRODITE
K: Before I killed her we had lunch. How long have you been here? Claudia? Claudia? Are you there?
CLAUDIA ; I came to the Casa Negra rather late in time, before the heavy rains. Since I was arriving by helicopter, my first view was of the roof. Below me I could see the maid, Chinita, and the waitress, Penthesilea, eating sandwiches. The lustrous little army! I was happy then. Who the hell knows why, but they knew why. Where were you? I didn't see you. Yeah, well, they had a little radio and they were listening to French pop songs. They led me down the stairs, a row of vestal virgins, guarding what was to become your fortress of solitude, a blackened crater turned inside out; before it turned outside in and in upon itself. Thank you for inviting me. "I've been looking forward to this all year", said Chinita. We entered the crater. It was unparalleled in its magnificence. It had become enclosed by itself, within itself.
Who was it that warned me not to go near the Casa Negra? What happened, you ask? Exploding confusion and desecration, taking it apart stone by stone, by grain of cement into powder, transmogrified, so help me, god. it could happen to you.
How many times have I been through this before? The elevator technician was hanging from the balcony, bared and naked, pieces of fingers flying in five directions, a greasy grease monkey. The first second of the first convulsion. And the sound? It ran into the moon and exploded, howling like a broken guitar. Flying in the face of living air, five tones and four points hitting at regular intervals caressed me tightly against the walls. And the space? The place? The taste? Walls swaying, pisspot, coriander, artemis, jackpot. It needed nothing to propell it. "Nothing?", you ask. Not nothing. A box of light, a surprise, at last, in the end, finally.
K: Sandwich?
CLAUDIA : Thanks. And me? A broken nose, bleeding without a face, flying in the face of dead air. Thus spoke the headless mountain mouth in a gust of methane breath. Thus spoke Krakatoa, Haleakala, Penthesilea, Taormina.
K: Where are you?
CLAUDIA : I'm on the threshold of rapture, and you're the one.
You are the one I've been waiting for so long, the one I've been dreaming of.
You are the one I've been waiting for, the one I've been dreaming of.
Don't be afraid.
You are the one I've been dreaming of.
Push me over the edge.
I'd do it for you.
You are the one I've been waiting for.
I've been waiting for you.
Take away my sense of gravity.
I've been waiting.
Take away my gravity.
Come on down and do what you've got to do.
I'd do it for you.
You are the one.
I've waited a lifetime for this second, and this second only, this one second.
Give me this one second, and then take it away from me.
Send me forward.
Don't leave me this way.
I can't survive.
I can't stay alive without your love.
Don't leave me this way.
I can't exist.
I'll surely miss your tender kiss.
Don't leave me this way.
Don't you understand?
I'm at your command.
Oh, baby, please, please don't leave me this way.
Give me this one second, and then take it away.
Satisfy the need in me, and then take it away.
Kill me, please.
Please, kill me, and let me live again.
Satisfy the need in me.
Don't leave me this way.
Don't be afraid, there is magic all around me.
Don't leave me this way.
(SONG "DON'T LEAVE ME THIS WAY" RAIN)