Field of Flesh

Field of Flesh
Directed by Derek Spenser
Chicago, 2024
@ Leisure

We are all fundamentally delusional. Our consciousness makes us feel individual — special and separate from our environment. And yet we know we’re porous creatures who spray each other with spit particles, cultivate biomes in our gut, and can’t stop repeating words we learned on the internet. We navigate this dissonance by cultivating further delusions: ideological, narrative, consumptive, and so on.

Death is the ultimate release from delusion and dissonance. But for the living, death is nourishment. We pull the other inside ourselves for safekeeping and physically process the body as a way of mentally processing grief and impermanence.

We are always watching each other die – sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly. Someday we’ll all be nothing but dust and digital ghosts. But while we’re here, all stuck as actors in each other’s waking dreams, I’d like to toast to the pleasures of delusion, long may they last.​

Devised & Performed by:
Nigel Brown
Carmia Imani
Mackenzie Jones
Katie Mazzini
Brian Shaw
Elijah Valter
Austin Winter

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Assistant Director: Corin Wiggins
Set & Props: Gillian Butcher
Costumes: Kate Grube
Associate Producers: X. A. Li & Estlin Usher
Graphic Design: Jens “Yence” Wagner