The Back Story
I am currently experimenting with using the very old performative tradition of the procession as a way to tell a contemporary narrative. The "back story" for the performance/procession is about a fictional elderly couple who had been married and living on Coney Island with a view of the ocean for sixty years.
Recently, she'd gotten a lot more "dreamy" and her husband had gotten much more frail. Their adult children feared their elderly parents couldn't take care of each other any more. Neither of the kids thought they could tend to both parents, so after selling off their house, the son took his dad to Maine and the daughter took her mom to Florida.
The distraught old man whispered to his confused wife as they were getting packed into separate cars, that she shouldn't be afraid... that "wherever there is water", he would be with her.
Some months later, in her daughter's house, Huberta got up from her rocking chair in the middle of the night, and when she saw her pocket book by the door, it occurred to her she was going out... and so she did. The screen door slammed behind her, but not loud enough to wake anyone in the house who was sleeping, so before anyone noticed she was gone, she was well on her way - shuffling through the suburbs in her bunny slippers towards the swamp in search of her love and her former life… .
The rest of the story tells of Huberta's adventures on her quest north by way of many bodies of water. She walks through dark rivers flanked by cypress trees and watering holes in fake safaris and fountains in bustling cities. She encounters many perils along the way, and many unexpected heroes. There are the swamp gas spectres, for example - horrible, Rush Limbaugh-looking, glowing, bloviators - who hover closer and closer to her, until the hairpins holding her bun in place form a chorus line of stewardesses on her head and high kick the noxious wind out of them.
She keeps meandering north, and by the time she gets to Richmond, someone has written an article about her, or a blog, so by the time she gets to Baltimore, she has a following... When she arrives in Philadelphia - this town of great parades, and home of the first parade in the U.S., - she is greeted with open arms and a night procession that recreates her journey so far with sculptural translations of her adventures....
The Procession
This narrative procession will use sculptural objects to perform a miniature version of Huberta’s journey and the mundane and mystical encounters she has had along the way. Some of the figures will be structurally based on processional figures of saints. One of my favorite things about my neighborhood in Brooklyn is the tradition of summer processions dedicated to patron saints, which involve a small throng of devotees carrying a statue representing said saint. They are intended to celebrate a particular, historical person and/or event with significance to the Catholic Church, but to me they are also a celebration of sculpture. A crowd of singing people marches through the streets literally elevating an object that an artist and artisans have made. And whether it is the actual intent or not, there is no question that this art object has become a rallying point.
"Wherever There is Water" involves a re-imagining of one of these processions, dissociated from the specifics of a church or a religion, but embracing the shared experience of moving through life as a quest, riddled with obstacles and accomplishments. The story of Huberta's journey is the story to be told in the procession, and it is the presence of this story which defines the performance as a "procession" instead of a "parade." The procession will be comprised of sculptures that represent Huberta and her old human friends, which will be heading north. There will also be performative objects representing the monsters and angels she met along the way, weaving their way around her, or walking for a while with her at various intervals. Some of the narrative is told through banners and flags - snippets of text that unravels from north to south as well as from left to right. Some of story is inferred by the sculptural objects and their articulations or their relationships with one another. And some of it is understood in the movement of the procession itself.
This narrative procession will use sculptural objects to perform a miniature version of Huberta’s journey and the mundane and mystical encounters she has had along the way. Some of the figures will be structurally based on processional figures of saints. One of my favorite things about my neighborhood in Brooklyn is the tradition of summer processions dedicated to patron saints, which involve a small throng of devotees carrying a statue representing said saint. They are intended to celebrate a particular, historical person and/or event with significance to the Catholic Church, but to me they are also a celebration of sculpture. A crowd of singing people marches through the streets literally elevating an object that an artist and artisans have made. And whether it is the actual intent or not, there is no question that this art object has become a rallying point.
"Wherever There is Water" involves a re-imagining of one of these processions, dissociated from the specifics of a church or a religion, but embracing the shared experience of moving through life as a quest, riddled with obstacles and accomplishments. The story of Huberta's journey is the story to be told in the procession, and it is the presence of this story which defines the performance as a "procession" instead of a "parade." The procession will be comprised of sculptures that represent Huberta and her old human friends, which will be heading north. There will also be performative objects representing the monsters and angels she met along the way, weaving their way around her, or walking for a while with her at various intervals. Some of the narrative is told through banners and flags - snippets of text that unravels from north to south as well as from left to right. Some of story is inferred by the sculptural objects and their articulations or their relationships with one another. And some of it is understood in the movement of the procession itself.
