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In Ravi Mangla’s “Arcadia,” a retro video game seller goes in search of a game rumored to be a CIA psyops experiment. What he discovers—through a surrealist turn in the narration—is the depths of his own grief.
“Like all Irish Catholic families, mine was suspicious of admitted alcoholics,” says Dennis Monk, the narrator of Michael Deagler’s Early Sobrieties. This is a problem, because Dennis Monk is newly sober and staying with his parents in the Pennsylvania suburbs. “An admission of alcoholism meant that a frank conversation was about to be had, and an Irish Catholic family abhors nothing so much as a frank conversation.”
From Poor Cow (1967) and Kes (1969) to Raining Stones (1993) and My Name is Joe (1998), Loach has elevated the humanity and everyday courage of, in his words, society’s 'nonpersons.” His deceptively simple stories of families and neighborhoods, captured with an unflinching gaze, vibrate with anger.
When I began performing my solo project A Body in Places (2014–), I left theaters and danced, or rather lay down, in places like churches and street plazas. I regard these sites as “places,” characterized by its functions, habitats, and constituencies. I observe each place for as many days as available. I am a visitor/a foreigner, but at the performance, I need to feel I belong there.
The body as an impediment, a prison for the soul, an obstacle to contemplation. I am the result of that education, of that culture. A culture that admires sacrifice and willingness for martyrdom.