“Closer” is part of the ŠRÁMY project by Cie Pieds Perchés / Stéphanie Nyota NDuhirahe.
It is a work-in-progress of the third chapter of the ŠRÁMY project, which explores the visible and invisible traces that certain historical events may leave on our bodies.
“Closer” is an exploration of loss and the visible and hidden aspects of our relationships — how we hide and how we are seen. This project uses costume, new circus, aerial rope, physical theatre, and ethnographic/oral history interviews to weave a story with a strong aesthetic feeling. Marina will work with various collaborators to tell a story through her personal lens while incorporating the experiences of many others. She will conduct interviews with relevant individuals and integrate their memories into her own understanding of grief, growth, and identity.
Her starting questions are:
- Who lives inside us? How do the people we love inhabit our skin once they are gone?
- What do we show and what do we hide, when and why? How does hiding protect us, and how can it harm us?
- What happened in that historic moment of freedom and newly found open expression of gay love when AIDS came?
- How did the necessity of being seen — because invisibility meant death — change our world? Who are the ones who are missing How do they live inside us?
Costume — how do we change our roles, our tribe, our obligations, our inhibitions by changing the way we adorn our bodies? How does changing how we are seen allow us to express what we would otherwise hide? How can costume be such a powerful way to remove or expand the ego and reveal the self?
The first source of inspiration is Marina’s personal experience with the loss of close friends and family, and the question of how they now exist within her. How to remember the love, playfulness, and joy — not just the pain of their loss.
This reflection began at the funeral of her mother’s close friend, Bob, who died of AIDS. Some of Marina’s earliest memories include losing many friends — gay men taken by the disease in Los Angeles in the late 80s and early 90s.
Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, Cirqueon, Culture Moves Europe, Goethe-Institut
This work was produced with the financial support of the European Union.
The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
