Play Dead: People Watching Collective
Play Dead will be at Hupstate Circus Festival in Ithaca, NY
Suggested age 16+ due to partial nudity. Younger audience members welcome by parental or guardian discretion
Set in a shifting universe of domestic trappings and interlocking stories, People Watching’s first creation ‘Play Dead’ observes the way we navigate social connections. Through it’s surrealistic blend of acrobatics, movement and physical theater, the piece moves with larger than life physicality while bathing in an intimate atmosphere. By giving place for seemingly unexceptional stories to unfold, we look closer and marvel at how beautiful, twisted, and sometimes laughable reality can be. Balanced on the cusp of the familiar and the otherworldly, this performance is a reflection on the twilight of youth and all the uncertainties, flawed ideals and sheer exhilaration that such an age encompasses. But rather than settling into bored fatalism, this piece celebrates life, the same way people desperately dance to the last song before the party ends.
Two opportunities to see the show
Friday, Aug 30 2024 7:00 PM EDT - - Saturday, Aug 31 2024 2:00 PM EDT
About People Watching
People Watching is a collective comprising six multidisciplinary artists currently based in Montreal. Founded in the tumultuous spring of 2020, they were initially moved to investigate ways in which intimacy could be shared with an audience during a time of profound seclusion. The inquisitive nature of this creative process led them to fuse their organic acrobatic research with elements of physical theatre and nuanced choreographic work. By providing the awe-inspiring qualities of contemporary circus with a scaffolding of depth and context, People Watching began to establish a body of work that is intimate and inherently human. Using live performance, film, and photography as a vehicle for their artistic endeavors, they have found local and international recognition, which in turn has fostered collaborations with a multitude of established creatives and companies, such as Jacob Jonas The Company, Diego Vega, Amy J. Gardner, Alice Phoebe Lou, Ines Talbi, Susannah Haight and Jason Lam.
Performed, conceived and directed by Brin Schoellkopf, Natasha Patterson, Jarrod Takle, Jérémi Levesque, Ruben Ingwersen, Sabine Van Rensburg