Entertainment

ENTERTAINMENT is an epic-length work designed for exhibition in various formats, including serial, feature film, gallery installation and stage performance.

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The performers play nomadic characters, performing similar, ritualized enactments in disparate locations and transitory spaces. Identities become fluid, with characters traveling through multiple, dissimilar bodies. Many of the scenes are played in long takes with minimal action, to evoke a sense of life lived in planetary time. Dialogues, both mundane and farcical, occur sporadically and are echoed and continued elsewhere, by other bodies. Gradually, a fragile story of survival and transcendence emerges.

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The work is being produced in the form of self-contained modules shot individually, allowing performers full agency over their time and the extent of their participation. Characters are not bound to specific performers and the story continues even as performers appear and disappear.

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ENTERTAINMENT extends the themes of Mark Johnson's previous work, showing the body in situations of creative survival and attentiveness as it seeks to reclaim itself from exploitation. It is a serialized meditation on emotion and reconnection, explored through perceptions of nature, objects and the human body, all suspended in the vast expanse of geologic time.

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