March’s Project Residency WORK IN THE WOODS is act I, scene II in a sprawling “slow play” called IS THIS YOU, WANT? Written, directed, and performed by SCARCITY, a character created by interdisciplinary artist, writer, and performer G. Vincent Gaulin as a personification of the foundational conditions of economics. The first act of the play, POPULATION, is based on a saying handed down by the artist’s grandfather: “Used to, there was just three bears [of Goldilocks and the Three Bears] in the woods, and now the woods are full of them.” This act dramatizes the confounding affect of population growth on the state of politics, and translates large-scale political dynamics into interpersonal, relational dramas between its characters and viewers.

WORK IN THE WOODS is a darkly comical scene. The main character DISCIPLINE BEAR, workshops his BEARbrand, “a lifestyle corporation” with five administrative agencies and six product and service divisions, approaching every corner of life from food to clothing, exercise, occupation, scheduling, and even entertainment. The BEARbrand’s corporate structure aims to ensure comfort and security in the WOODS, as countermovement to ETIQUETTE BEAR’s leaving. At best, DISCIPLINE is an attentive and charismatic young executive. At worst, he’s an exploitative megalomaniacal sentimentalist. In a tragic confusion of motivations, DISCIPLINE spends a month wrestling with his compulsively cumbersome ultra-bureaucracy under the guise of attending to ETIQUETTE’s increasingly obstructed needs.

Desperate for any sources, the protagonist turns to the viewers of the work, ordinary humans with no experiential knowledge of the WOODS, to help him define and resurface conditions that ultimately have no potential for bolstering his far-reaching romantic project. The drama attempts to portray the dark energy massing in the wake of failing societal conventions like gender roles and dominant ideologies (religious, nationalistic, militaristic, industrial, and progressive), and also the mounting tensions between social “norms” and contemporary efforts to define and orient identities distributed across life’s real conditions, in real time.

Due to the relational nature of the project WORK IN THE WOODS will be open for viewing on an invitation and referral basis only. Viewing the work is not like viewing a conventional play. Participants are invited to schedule a personal meeting with DISCIPLINE BEAR to digest the work in conversation with the character and/or collaborate through exchange as he workshops his BEARbrand. Invitations will go out the first full week in March.

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Tags: Spoke, West Loop