Performance Proposal (Draft 2)

The Unseen Ghost Brigade presents

an Experiment in Theatre of the Unseen

Title

Renegade Phantasms or The Shadow Cast Along the Banks of the Mississippi

Themes
• the interest of industry vs. the interest of living things
• transient ghosts
• danger/change/unknown vs. stability/permanence/stasis
• the relationship between natural forces of the river
and the people
that inhabit it.

Premise

A force that possesses an intrinsic current, like the Mississippi itself, resists mightily all attempts to stabilize it. Great suffering has come, and will come, from such attempts.

Synopsis

This show is comprised of a band of ghosts who all died in someway on or in the Mississippi River. They had been relegated to the lower dregs of society because they gave outlets to forces that society tends to control, and are therefore representative of ideals manifested inside a controlling society. Within each ghost is a current that drives them and it is this current that society tried to crush. Some characters that we have discussed are two lovers, one who is trying to say goodbye, and one who is trying to bring them both back to life by building a strange machine. Other characters we’ve discussed are gamblers, river rats, prostitutes, businessmen who tried to control the river and died in the process, shanty boat caravans, etc. The audience is traveling down the river (figuratively speaking), experiencing the ghosts as they are experiencing the river; the audience is traveling down the river whose banks are littered with ghosts. The ghosts tell their stories (through surrealist representations of their death), have conflict with each other, and comment on the present as well as reveal the past.


Stylistic Influences

• surrealist clown, (movement through the world is the driving force that tells the story)
• absurdism
• circus arts (stilts, acrobatics, juggling, etc.)
• Robert ParkeHarrison (The Architecht’s Brother)
• Faulkner Rock
• old time, social music

Purpose for Telling These Stories

We wish to make connections unbiasedly from the performers to the audience, and within the audience as well, in contrast to the controlling effects of a society that maintains us in stasis and static hierarchies. We seek to connect people through a dialogue that will open a way to find a commonness within them. We aim to do this without being didactic, only to propose that we have more choices than are often presented to us and therefore we each need to decide for ourselves (collectively and individually) what is important. We will propose this by asking questions, not in an attempt to find any one answer, but to encourage the act of questioning. We are creating this theatre as a way of seeking a kind of justice for the injustices that have been done and are continuing to be done; however, we choose the way of theatre because it can affect not only the mind, but the emotions and the soul through music, humor, movement, and play.