FuturePerfect

New York Premiere

Commissioned by FuturePerfect and The New York Public Library

Following its lauded production of Gatz at the Public Theater, Elevator Repair Service joins forces with artist Ben Rubin and statistician Mark Hansen to present Shuffle, a new performance installation that provides a fresh look at literature we thought we knew. Shuffle is an entirely new kind of ERS performance, one with constantly re-generated text and a dream-like logic. In this work the company looks back on its last three pieces, informed by current research in database aesthetics—the role of data in creating new ways of experiencing and making art. The result is a site-specific (fever dream) where the company attempts to read “The Great Gatsby,” “The Sound and the Fury” and “The Sun Also Rises” simultaneously.  The rearranged and overlapping texts produce compelling visual displays designed by Rubin and surprising, often absurd, micro-theater featuring many veteran ERS performers. Audience is encouraged to wander among the performers as they improvise .  With scripts generated in real time by digital algorithms, phrases from the iconic novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway merge to create a look back at some of America’s favorite texts that are at once disorienting and enlightening.

FuturePerfect acknowledges Park Avenue Armory for residency in association with the development of this work.

NOTES ON HOW TO WATCH SHUFFLE

Each performance cycle lasts approximately 20 minutes with a short pause in between. Performers will break for 20 minutes approximately every 90 minutes. The audience is encouraged to move freely around the room as the impulse strikes them.

Shuffle consists of 20-minute cycles of scenes as well as video projections and displays. The actors perform multiple short scenes simultaneously which may be watched for any duration and in any order. The scenes and video display are created by overlapping and interconnected software algorithms. These algorithms sample from the text of ERS’ last three shows–Gatz, The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928) and The Select (The Sun Also Rises)–and combine the words and phrases according to various commonalities and linguistic and grammatical analysis.

Schemes are generated from a virtual machine that scrolls rapidly through the three texts while keeping them lock together like huge gears. When the software needs a word from one text it spins it forward and, in the process, moves the other texts forward as well. This creates infinite variety and constantly yields new arrangements of the words of Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemmingway.

FROM ERS’ ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, JOHN COLLINS

This collaboration was first proposed by FuturePerfect Founding Artistic Director Wayne Ashley. Since 2009, Mark Hansen, Ben Rubin and I have been meeting to discuss how we could create a kind of language-generating machine that would employ performers in much the same their other projects have used only text and sound. After many experiments and much rich stimulating discussion, we chose to make a sort of absurdist retrospective of ERS’ last three major works. The result is Shuffle.

PROJECT CREDITS

Created by: Elevator Repair Service with Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen

Director: John Collins
Text Processing and Design: Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen
Producer: Ariana Smart Truman
Stage Manager/Assistant Director: Sarah Hughes
Technical Director: Michael Clemow
Company Manager: Lindsay Hockaday
Assistant to the Director: Katherine Brook

Collaborators:
Frank Boyd
Sarah Hughes
Mike Iveson
Vin Knight
Annie McNamara
Kate Scelsa
Kaneza Schaal
Scott Shepherd
Susie Sokol
Lucy Taylor
Matt Tierney
Victoria Vazquez
Ben Williams