ABOUT THE SHOW
Ocean Filibuster began in late 2016 with a commission from the American Repertory Theater in partnership with the Harvard University Center for the Environment, part of a project to bring science and environmental issues to stage. This opportunity allowed us to extend the work we began with How to Build a Forest, our 8-hour performance meditation on forests, ecosystems and human systems.
We asked Ocean Scientists at Harvard what they most wanted us to convey about this vast body of water. They were quiet for a minute and then one said “Wonder?” We were hooked.
We quickly became obsessed and concerned with the Ocean as a “human enabler” especially when it came to the carbon cycle. We rely on ocean photosynthesis to create half the air that we breathe. We increasingly inhibit the ocean’s ability to create this air by overloading it with carbon, but it keeps taking it, protects us from feeling the negative impact of our actions, and allows us to keep on with our destructive behavior. But how much can the Ocean take? It seems like we’ve reached that point. What if the Ocean decided to start speaking out-- and spoke and spoke and spoke until it was heard?
Inspired by Wendy Davis’ historic filibuster in the Texas Senate in 2013, we imagined a future global senate in a world where the Ocean has already changed the shape of many continents due to sea level rise. Mr. Majority presents a bill to protect humanity by ending the Ocean as we know it; The Ocean arrives to stand up for itself and begins to filibuster the bill.
We knew immediately that both characters would be played by one actor, exploring the intimate, interconnected human-ocean relationship. Jenn Kidwell, with their immense clowning and devising talent and huge heart and mind, was the perfect person. We also knew both characters would speak and sing their arguments, and asked our long-time collaborator Sxip Shirey to join us to compose music. To engage with wonder, we looked to video design, and invited video designer Tal Yarden to dream with us. The rest of our fabulous design team came later, once we had a draft of the show.
Ocean Filibuster includes an interactive intermission, where the Ocean invites the audience to explore its systems through different interactive modalities. These “mini-labs” allow the audience to go deeper into the ocean and into hyper-local environmental issues important to their community.
Ocean Filibuster includes many ways for schools to be involved in the work, including coming to a field-trip friendly version of the show, and a virtual education module that includes creative exercises for students to reflect on the work and a zoom visit from the show’s creators.
OCEAN FILIBUSTER received support from The New England Foundation For The Arts’ National Theater Project, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and additional support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; The Distracted Globe Foundation; New York State Council on the Arts; Wesleyan University; Alternate Roots; our Kickstarter donors (meet them here!).
About PearlDamour
We are PearlDamour: Katie Pearl and Lisa D’Amour, theater collaborators since 1997. Our first project was a 14-hour shifting tableau of simple scenes in a grove of trees at the side of a busy road in Austin, TX designed to be viewed by passing cars. In the 25 years since, our work has evolved from intimate site-specific theater experiments exploring metaphysical questions about identity into larger scale interdisciplinary performances about the human need to connect with community and the natural world. Our collaborators have included dancers, musicians, visual artists, wrestlers, video designers, animators, and other theater artists--an ever-changing ensemble that allows our projects to evoke wonder by combining disciplines, by using space in surprising ways, by blending fact and fantasy, and provoking performance norms.
PearlDamour is the proud recipient of a 2003 Obie Award for our show NITA & ZITA (with ArtSpot Productions), as well as 4 MAP fund awards, 2 NEA Our Town grants, a Creative Capital award and a NEFA National Theater and Touring Project award. Our touring history includes MILTON, a 5-city 5-year performance and community engagement project in small towns named “Milton” across the U.S. (for which we received two separate NEA Our Town grants) and HOW TO BUILD A FOREST, an 8 hour performance installation where we build and dismantle a fabricated forest on stage, which premiered at The Kitchen in NYC and then toured to universities and art centers in New Orleans, Nashville and Providence, marshalling a team of 35 local participants/performers at each stop. Whatever their form,PearlDamour’s projects create community, build relationships, and investigate what we find most mysterious and pressing in today’s world.
You can find see images and videos and learn more about our past work at www.pearldamour.com
