situating the respirator within lineages of masking

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commedia dell’arte & the respirator as a relational mask

In commedia dell’arte, you die of everything. While Lecoq describes commedia as the art of being human, I instead play with commedia as the art of being governed.

Using the framework of respiration and the respirator as a relational mask, we operate under the basic assumption that everyone breathes and breathes again.

Through this, we start to see the cracks of the mask of liberalism and neoliberalism more broadly - also the necropolitics of our everyday lives.

Can stock characters change? Can settings? Relationships?

The circus - competence, strategy

The respirator & the neutral mask

What the neutral mask taught me about the respirator - and life more broadly. Spoiler alert: nothing about it was neutral.

clowning with the

respirator

this may seem antithetical to many and intriguing for lots!

this could be ‘object work,’ physical theater, improv, clowning, and/or play, but really it’s about taking the little everyday moments & playing with them versus seeing them as inconveniences or interruptions - we need these interruptions - it gives us time to get out of the occupied flow state - out of this automatic death drive.

as a relational mask too

clowning, nonsense, competence

the circus & theater

the respirator &

the neoliberal voice

The economies of expression allowed and how it is somatic