LIFE by Charles Mee

What do we turn to when faced with life’s limits? Project Y Theatre experiments with the world premiere of Charles Mee’s LIFE, a series of striking moments where characters must face the limits of love, security, and meaning.

HERE Arts Center
Aug 31 – Sept 2, 2017

written by Charles Mee
directed by Joey Rizzolo
with Hilary Asare, Meg Bashwiner, Jill Beckman, Shelton Lindsay, Nessa Norich, T

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We invite you to join us as we explore LIFE! Project Y will be creating a digital collage in tandem with the live performance! And we want YOU to participate…

Click here to learn how!

About the Play

Charles (Chuck) Mee writes plays that, instead of following one developing story, are an accumulation of “images and music and other events” in contrasting, vivid scenes that make up a theatrical collage. Mee wants to “to invite people to let their minds roam over the material–not only the material that’s onstage, but the material that these other things will make them think about. … People have to find their own way through and arrive at their own conclusions. This is a democratic process, a participatory process.”

This collage is also like sampling as Mee incorporates found texts and imagery, particularly visual art references. Mee has said, “I think of those borrowed texts as historical documents, taken from the culture. People are karaokeing, in a way.”

Mee’s collages also come from an impulse to capture the complexity and the beauty of life. For years Mee has been quoting Nietzsche and arguing that “people make up stories to reassure themselves. The experience of our lives is not a story, it’s a collection of vivid moments. …That’s what our lives are made of. That’s the truth of our lives.” This is the heart of Life. And in its juxtaposing collage of scenes, it asks what can we really know, given the impermanence of love, the slipperiness of security, and the evasiveness of meaning? And how should that affect our lives?

The answers to those questions are yours to decide. And, in the meanwhile, here are words spoken early in the play to keep in mind:

SECOND PROLOGUE
Well, I think what we can say now
more than that
is that everyone
meaningless or not
is a work of art.
And therefore an extraordinary
fantastic
creature.

Visit lifebymee.com to learn more.

This production is a part of [email protected]: a curated rental program, which provides artists with subsidized space and equipment, as well as technical support.

Project Y Theatre is supported by The Dramatists Guild, NYSCA, NY Department of Cultural Affairs, The Puffin Foundation, ART/NY Nancy Quinn Fund, ART/NY Creative Space Grant.