DEMOLISHING EVERYTHING WITH AMAZING SPEED (2016)
Discovered during a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 2013, Demolishing Everything with Amazing Speed is a collection of four wordless scripts written by Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero in 1917. The first play, “Safe” is simply a numbered list of abstract actions. A man in a small room makes gestures or stomps and with each action, stuff in the room (a table, a painting, geometric objects) moves around. “Acrobatic Suicides and Homicides” starts as a series of unrelated vignettes, and somewhere in the middle (bizarrely) the play suddenly develops a plot involving multiple mass murders and suicides. In “Automatic Thief,” the thief uses hypnosis and a giant magnet to steal everything from watches to pastry, violently does away with the cops on his trail, and escapes in a “wonderful elevator.” “Electric Adventure” tells of a love triangle between an engineer, a stationmaster and his wife. Through a series of accidents, they all end up dead. But when their coffins get tangled up in some high tension wires, they are electrified back to life and return to their jobs and electrically wreak havoc. Although written in a playful tone, the plays’ political and social undertones—ideals framed by the Futurists, one of Europe’s fringe cultural movements of the early 20th century – have become frighteningly current in today’s world of school shootings, police brutality and neo-Fascist rants.
Futurist puppet plays by Fortunato Depero
Translated, designed and directed by Dan Hurlin
Performed by Jennifer Kidwell, Eric F. Avery, C.B. Goodman, Catherine Gowl, Takemi Kitamura, Rowan Magee, Josh Rice, Chris Carcione
Original music and sound design by Dan Moses Schreier
Projection design by Tom Lee
Lighting design by Tyler Micoleau
A project of Red Wing performing group, Produced by MAPP International Productions
Commissioned by and developed in residence at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College
Premiere at the Fisher Center at Bard College
Toured Internationally
Photos: Stephanie Berger