The Keys Experiment

Well, I performed The Keys Experiment at the Red Eye last weekend. I think it went pretty well. It ended up being a lot simpler than I intended, but I think it did resonate with people, from the feedback that I got. For the transitions between the characters, I found that if I took a pause and moved into the next person, I didn't need anything too clever to make the audience understand it was the next scene. We ended up not using any blackouts at all.

One thing that quite a few people said to me is that they were very drawn to the scenes that weren't just monologues. Barbra called them the "treated" scenes. For instance, when I eat my hands, or in my "assembly line" scene where I show time lapsing by repeating actions that the volunteers went through, warping the movements as the voiceover got continually more abstract.

When I do the piece at the Soap Factory next month, I'm hoping to add another movement sequence- this time focusing on what happens to the body in a state of starvation. I'll have to do some exploring about what that means. I also want to add another Keys monologue, speaking with wife toward the end of the experiment, and I want to do the scene which i didn't have time to do for the Redeye between one of the CO's and his girlfriend (played by a puppet). So that is quite a bit of work in less than two months but I'm pretty excited about it. I think three new scenes is a reasonable goal. I'd also like to add video, but that would be icing on the cake at this point- and i'm not positive it would work.