Mystery of Love

Interactive performance piece for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art’s Black Heart’s Ball

Using the prompt “mystery of love” our ensemble began creating this piece by exploring the 1980’s PBS show “Mystery!” intro featuring drawings of Edgar Gorey and modern videogame music. We used these macabre stories, images and sounds to create the foundation for this interactive piece. The celebration of the tearfully sentimental and overwrought would allow the audience to approach their own feelings of love. Performers embody the archetypes of love and loss: the sighing and forgotten figure, the scandalous vagrant, the treacherous beauty, the fatally honorable. The audience becomes engaged in the same world by gamifying bits of verse, movement, and song, as lead by the performers.

In this video, the audience is in a circle. Mischa tells the story of “The Invisible Red Thread” as she connects each person with a continuous string. Justin and Edwin then chose a segment of string, pull two strangers to towards each other. Justin and Edwin then ask the pair heart-opening questions (e.g. “What color is love?”) and then guide the pair to ask each other question as prompted by the actors. This game is repeated several times before moving on. The outcome is an immediate vulnerability and connection within the small group as we continue through the galleries.