Why this project now?
Move premiered in 2020, and it is written specifically as an interrogation into our current zeitgeist. Julia Taudevin’s work asks audiences to examine the power of connection and of the collective at a time when the global population becomes increasingly homogenized towards a modern Western emphasis on the individual. Collective ritual has been an important touchstone of human culture throughout our history, but it is one which continues to be more sanitized and scant in our society. Move examines the impulse both towards and away from ritual by drawing on ten thousand years of human history and examining by comparison how our current society deals with grief.
Three years later, this question only seems more urgent. The global pandemic brought the world crashing down and now many seem ready to slip it quickly and quietly under the rug. At the same time political identities across the country have become more extreme and vitriolic. Amidst these traumas it became necessary for us to remain apart, and feelings of isolation and anxiety reached unprecedented heights. What is our cultural mechanism for addressing these overwhelming psychological challenges? This play looks to the past and the present, with its eye to the future, and invites the audience to see the power of the collective. It is an invitation for audiences to engage meaningfully with their grief, not only in the sense of personal loss but also our collective cultural losses in a world where they seem increasingly present.
