Hark and Woe (2006)

With Lauren Crux

Tableau vivant performance at Lighthouse Point, Santa Cruz, California.

I collaborated with performance artist/writer Lauren Crux to develop this public tableau at Light House Point in Santa Cruz, CA. Under the group name CMD-Z, 19 people participated as actors, designers and assistants.

The terms “Hark” and “Woe” connote two ends of the spectrum of human emotions. With grand gestures modeled on Victorian graveyard statues that portray female figures in postures of exaltation and grief, HARK and WOE evoked failed heroes, unstable monuments, cranky mortals and other sentient beings. The inspiration for this particular site was a statue of a young male surfer, a contemporary version of the idealized monument to fallen soldiers. Unlike a traditional still Tableau, each actor moved slowly through choreographed gestures that occasionally broke down in a failure of heroic posture.