Intimacy with a Thousand Things
Nadia Ross, Sarah Conn and George Acheson
Produced by STO UNION in co-production with Brut Kunstlerhaus, Vienna, Austria
and in association with the Wakefield Art Collective
This new creation is the company’s most personal to date. After years of probing the life of others, Nadia Ross turns her eye onto herself, revealing a tumultuous life that is at once a call for a re-evaluation of the place of women in this world, and a deep struggle with the past that continues to haunt her until this day.
Intimacy is a personal life story where extreme events have become commonplace, and the struggle to not only to find balance amidst the turmoil but also motivation to do something about it is hard to find: afraid and overwhelmed, the natural response is to withdraw from it all with no desire to adapt to this new world, as ‘adapting’ is no longer an option.
In our current production, we take a walk through life in the modern era, lead by voices of the past, the present and from far away. We construct a paradise, only to gently tear it down to see what remains. This is done through personal stories, video projections, songs, discussions and texts.
A new orientating principal or operating myth is required but none can be found. The storyteller is too overwhelmed to speak and his stories are no longer meaningful. Hope, like dope, has run its course.
So now what?
Both the personal world of the main character (Nadia Ross) and the world around her are filled with debt. The past holds our collective debt and demands to be re-imbursed. How can we pay back something that is already gone?
Debts can be dealt with in two ways: they can be re-paid or they can be forgiven, and the choice is completely hers to make.
In a world of extremes, where joy and love mix with natural disasters and human suffering, do we isolate or engage? It can be empowering to retreat and create our own little sanctuary, but is that what we really want?
Intimacy with a Thousand Things is about the human condition at its most vulnerable and the reconciliation of this state with reality as it presents itself.
Currently, the company has concluded it’s third workshop on the piece. We will be having one more workshop session in March of 2013. The piece will be completed at that time and available for touring.
STO Union gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts on Intimacy with a Thousand Things.
