"Her humor at times like these punctured the heavy meditation on death without glossing over it, without pretending everything was okay."
Read the whole review of the remount of Bastard at JACK 2018: https://www.culturebot.org/2018/04/28224/at-home-with-the-humorless-bastard/
Water, waterfalls, wombs, grief, gravity, glitter, charles manson, chaos, the olympics, natural disasters, encephalopathy, ambition, guilt, shame, violence, relational aesthetics, the politics of mental illness, heroin, brain swelling, cell death, menstruation, banshees, scotland, keening, booze, magic, money, the eagles, tribalism, erica’s sports bar, gentrification, hopelessness, despair, “sexy nihilism”, spatial anything, reproduction, representation, poststructuralism, the cuisine in hospitals, and Death: The Musical. I am the only performer but I am joined, as always, by the army of dead people that I love.
Creation and Performance: Annie Wilson
Direction: Rebecca Wright
Set Design: Lisi Stoessel
Sound Design: Adriano Shaplin
Lighting Design: Andrew Thompson
Production and Stage Management: Terry Mittelman, Nicole Labadie-Bartz
Dramaturg Plus: Miguel Gutierrez
Creative Collaborator: Alex Torra
Previously...
December 1-3rd, 2016
*World Premiere*
FringeArts, Philadelphia
March 29th-31st, 2018
JACK, Brooklyn
"There is the greatest cardboard tube song and dance you’ve never seen. Like swallowing a pill if the pill had to go outside your body. Looking at the ceiling catchment, I’m thinking and admiring: You can’t fake the color of period blood. It’s the color of a life and death on your fingers, on fabric in the sink." - Lily Kind, Culturebot
"The bastard: an urge to fall down, a depressive thought that won’t flush away, the bobbing reminder of personal failure. Grief personified in reluctance to persevere. Maybe, too, the humorless bastard is the big plastic sheet, sagging with blood, hanging over Wilson’s head." - Julius Ferraro, thINKing Dance
"Events like AT HOME WITH THE HUMORLESS BASTARD need to happen more often. It isn’t just dance; it is socially provocative artwork." - Chuck Shultz, Phindie
This piece was made possible with support from:
Headlong Dance Theater's Incubated Artist Program
The Anton Foundation
The many folks who stopped in on rehearsal, gave feedback, and joined me onstage.
And the individual donors:
Clayton Sweeney, Demian Larry, Simon Joseph, Vincent Fumo, Eric Wahlstrom, David Wertheimer, Aaron Cromie, Ellen Chenoweth