The Undernature

Presented by The Lesser Lamps in Minneapolis Minnesota.

Writer, Director, Actor, Lighting Design, Projection Design, Sound Designer, Composer, Producer, Technical Direction

About The Piece

This piece was an exploration of humanity’s relationship with the natural world. By anthropomorphizing nature in the character of The Undernature, I explored three primary ways we interact with this character: Observer, Trapper, and Hunter.

This piece is a 3 stanza poem, each attempting to get to the heart of these interactions one at a time. A performance where the unconscious push and pull with our surroundings in nature is embodied. A playfully serious examination of how we assume, as humans, we are on top, yet nature somehow always wins.

Process

This piece followed my “storybook” devising strategy, in which the basic dramaturgy was sketched out in simple, sectional form. From there, we explored its structure in the space with actors through embodied experimentation. Together, we uncovered missing links, developed the characters, and honed the work toward its animating question: When the opponent is nature, can we ever truly win?