Season 10: TIME
Coming Soon
The Melting Mind
WORLD PREMIERE | SUMMER 2023
An OUT LOUD wholly original & devised creation
Guided and Curated by Founding Artistic Director, Kira Hawkridge
Devised by the Season 10 OUT LOUD Ensemble
An OUT LOUD wholly original & devised creation
Guided and Curated by Founding Artistic Director, Kira Hawkridge
Devised by the Season 10 OUT LOUD Ensemble
The Melting Mind is, at its core, a meditation on memory. Through non linear expressions of past, present, and future, a chorus of voices and bodies in space journey through the ebbs and flows of time, dreams, color, and nostalgia, exploring what it means to live a life - to form bonds, to make mistakes, to love deeply, to be informed and shaped by our memories as we continue to create and experience new ones, and what it can mean when those memories fade or transform entirely.
The altering of memory, and the inevitable loss that can come with age and illness, particularly through Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease, can be unforgiving. It inarguably takes an incredible toll on the individual afflicted, rippling out to those who are near and dear to them. Because of the nature of this experience, in it’s portrayal it is often, and understandably so, centered around what is being lost. It is often viewed as painful and frightening as a mind slips away and loved ones become strangers. And while that great loss of what was once our reality is something many of our ensemble members have lived through, we've latched on to the calling so many of us heard to embrace the ability to be present with a new reality, opening up an unexpected opportunity to connect in a vastly different capacity - rooted in emotion and driven by our senses.
The altering of memory, and the inevitable loss that can come with age and illness, particularly through Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease, can be unforgiving. It inarguably takes an incredible toll on the individual afflicted, rippling out to those who are near and dear to them. Because of the nature of this experience, in it’s portrayal it is often, and understandably so, centered around what is being lost. It is often viewed as painful and frightening as a mind slips away and loved ones become strangers. And while that great loss of what was once our reality is something many of our ensemble members have lived through, we've latched on to the calling so many of us heard to embrace the ability to be present with a new reality, opening up an unexpected opportunity to connect in a vastly different capacity - rooted in emotion and driven by our senses.
The Melting Mind seeks to viscerally and physically investigate this inner transition from cognitive memory into emotional memory through the lens of a father and daughter as visual artists and painters. They first paint their canvas, then their surroundings, and eventually themselves, stepping into their emotional connection as tangible - an embodiment of what it means to experience their relationship shifting, altering, and becoming something new. Our emotional memory is potent and allows threads of connection that often remain untouched. This work provides a pathway for audiences and creatives alike to go on this journey together, opening up the door for how we think about our own memories, how we think about those in our lives, our circles, our communities experiencing a shift in their own perception and how meeting someone where they are with a commitment to being present can be a profound pathway for empathy, connection, and emotional understanding. Our ensemble has dug deep into our own autobiographical experiences and offered them into the collective space. Our memories made tangible, developed and explored throughout the piece, overlay and intertwine with this visual transformation - breaking down and giving way to the nonverbal, further asking the audience to go on this journey along with us.
The impact of developing this work has been immense. The process of creating something so deeply personal that can be widely interpreted while blurring the lines between performance and visual art installation is thrilling, all aiming to further break down the walls between artistic mediums and disciplines. This piece has the potential to engage the senses and provide insight into seemingly unknowable experiences in a capacity that we had not dreamed possible.