Analog
March 1, 2013 – April 6, 2013
In this exploration of “fate,” Kurt Chiang relives his self-prescribed task of transcribing, by hand, the entirety of the 1954 novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Chiang explains the intricate details of the transcription—how long it took, where he performed the task, what color pen he used, the notebooks he wrote in—but the further he describes it, the more pressing the question, “Why does this thing exist?”
Chiang leads the audience into his thought process, first using text, and then through a space transformed to display the inside of his brain. The audience is placed physically beside his thought, a situation Chiang himself felt most acutely after being told he had survived cancer and during the years of tests it took to confirm this. Later in the show, the rest of the ensemble joins Chiang on stage to contribute their own voices, supporting or rejecting the thoughts that Chiang has laid out.
Analog drafts a map of where we go when we write. It describes the peculiar darkness the writer must inhabit to find the privacy to write, and after establishing one voice, culls others to turn that privacy inside out.