There's a lot to be angry about these days, but *knowing* we are angry is not the same thing as *feeling* angry. This workshop comes with both playful and serious curiosity about where in our bodies our anger lives, or hides, how much room there is for a performer to express anger while still allowing/incentivizing an audience to feel into their own experience of anger. We call anger by many names/experiences/somatic reactions, but what happens when they just don't fit the definition of "steam coming out of her ears," "hopping mad" or "seeing red"? This workshop is an exploration of the quiet shadow that insists it's not anger because it has a full cognitive gasp of the situation and compassion for all involved. It eyes the permission to say the words "I'm mad right now" even though the world is not a safe space for us to inhabit our anger without loss. It aims to hone in on some really good questions to ask ourselves about our relationship to anger, and for this creator (who is writing this paragraph in the third person- a symptom of the need for the workshop?) to ask themself in the early stages of a theatrical exploration of anger (Can we complete a stress cycle inside of an Immersive theater piece? Would that suck to pay money for? Is there such a thing as pre-angry? When is anger funny? Is that last question a deflection?). As a part of this exploration, we will be creating maps of our anger/anger-adjacencies in a variety of forms, talking about how we know we are angry and when we are surprised by it, and exploring what kind of support is needed to access anger and how that fits into Immersive frameworks.
From the Artist
Jessica is a theatrical and Immersive Experience designer and head of IKantKoan Play/s Game and Production Studio. She believes the things we take most seriously in life are the things we ought to be most playful about; a task she pursues with an ironic focus. She is a 2022 Arctic Circle Artist-in-Residence, published 7 tabletop games based on different philosophical thought experiments, and recently served as Writer and Chief of Play for the development of a large scale Immersive Experience spanning a 90,000 square foot warehouse in the UK. Her work has been presented by ArsNova, HERE Arts, Fastaval, SXSW, Tanween Creativity Festival, Amos Eno Gallery, and La Jolla Playhouse. Jessica has spoken at The World Economic Forum DQ Symposium on Xr+ (NYC), Next Stage Immersive Summit (L.A.), GDC (San Fransisco), Beyond Opera (Helsinki), TEDx, and Games for Change (NYC), and been featured by The New Times, Imaginary Worlds, and on KQED San Fransisco, among others. As an artist/climate activist, she has worked in partnership with The National Parks Service, with Princeton's High Meadows Institute, and as a contributing author to The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World. She serves on the Board of Directors for Pig Iron Theater Company and holds an MFA in Devised, Physical, Ensemble Theater from the company’s conservatory.
On Anger: I think anger has been a part of every artistic project I have been a part of- rage working itself out through humor and a vision of what might be if the world were safer and kinder. Characters who allude to anger but never lose control. Interactivity that holds the audience while they do hard things and modeling anger as a character so they don’t have to feel it themselves. Immersive work has been my way of (among other things) initiating change without having to feel the anger myself- skipping directing to righting the wrong. Lately, I have noticed that I skipped a step: Feeling angry. A few weeks ago I asked friends if I could express some anger I was possibly experiencing with them; if they could be a safe space for me to speak of it and feel into it. The best I could offer as frame was “I think I might be angry but I’m not sure. I’m crying and there’s a buzzing in my ears.” They all said yes. I’d like to do more of that. Maybe in theater, as well as life. How those things are similar and differ is a core question of this workshop.
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