Eliza Bent is about as close to a recognizable brand as you can get in downtown theater land (I say this in a good way) – she has a specific and winning skewed sensibility and a propensity for characters, which I assumed would not be overly diminished by the Zoom platform.
All those toxic names on our money, our buildings, even our clothing. How they got there, and what it might mean to strip them of their meaning and power.
The made-up movie feels like one of those sweeping international melodramas with lots of expansive cinematography. In the minds of its creators, it’s an epic-length narrative replete with multi-generational strands and leaps forward in time.
It’s about how we try to use stories to explain things that we otherwise can’t explain, and how sometimes even those stories don’t do the work for us. How do we keep doing the work after the story?
We lean in, unable to control our own desire to be persuaded, even as we know that this is a play, this is not true, this is just another gesture in a world full of them
It’s less an interview and more a listening circle — if you are comfortable talking in front of a group, you’ll be just fine at it
If you can say one thing, and only one thing, about Harris’s body of work thus far, it’s that it certainly seems to incite conversation.
even if death is on everyone’s menu, lurking somewhere after dessert, this evening, we survived
I went in with this insane piece, this musical phantasmagoria island site-specific thing — and came out with my most, sort of, small quiet piece I’ve ever made that really relies upon, for the most part, humans behaving based on characteristics that we can perceive.
It’s not always clear what we’re looking at, but perhaps Henry is tearing down the house, family, and narrative form itself with hope alongside rage.
Their arguments, even when hate-filled, are lucidly formed and difficult to penetrate. There’s a weird thrill of uncomfortable relief when we find ourselves half-agreeing with them.
It’s the concept of being brave and having a safe space that is safe enough that you can feel brave — because it takes bravery to have those conversations that you know will be difficult, with people that might have a viewpoint that is different than yours, but in order to find common ground and to communicate with each other, those conversations must be had.