ParaTheatrical ReSearch
presents a rare public performance of

Orphans of Delirium


a series of convulsive initiatic rites designed by Antero Alli
also incorporating S.T. Coleridge's Kubla Khan

performed by
PARADOX POLLACK, SERENE ZLOOF, ALASKA YAMADA,
BRIAN LIVINGSTON, NICK WALKER, JULIAN SIMEON,
DESMONDE DAISY, GABRIEL, ADAM PALERMO,
JUSTIN PALERMO and JAKOB BOKULICH.
Live music & soundscape by Sylvi Alli


Brian Livingston as the Actor

Haunted by the deaths of his friends and loved ones, an actor drifts through
the reveries of an absinthe binge that erupts in a bevy of strange ritualistic
dreams from which he periodically awakens and lapses back into.

..
left to right: Brian Livingston, Paradox Pollack, Gabriel, Serene Zloof

Every day we talked, we walked around. Talking. But mostly, he listened.
Down that path around the church but never inside the church. Never inside
but always around the church, way in back, in the garden. In the garden he told
me things I always deep down wanted to believe but. Things like... angels dancing
on the head of a pin. Angels descending and ascending, angels rising and falling all
around us. All the time, melting into the ground. I didn’t want to believe him.
He said, it doesn’t matter what I believe because it’s all true anyway.
You said God doesn’t need belief. God creates belief.


Nick Walker as "The Magus"

Program Notes
by Antero Alli; w. more pix

2004
THREE PERFORMANCES

Sunday March 21, CELLspace, San Francisco
Sat. & Sun. March 13/14, WILDCAT STUDIOS, Berkeley
Running time: approx. 70-80 minutes per performance

 


How This Performance Developed

 


Antero Alli, director

Each paratheatrical lab meets for about three months (2-3 times a week) and pivots around a
different theme that, in part, determines the nature of the group outcome. The last lab theme
was “initiatic experience” which explored ritual forms for triggering sudden exposure to direct
experience of states of consciousness one had never known before and for which there were no
previous references or maps. True to form, the results of this "Initiations" lab were volatile
and explosive. After two months, these energies were directed into a
performance vehicle c alled “Orphans of Delirium.”

Antero Alli
from the NeoFiles interview (Sept. 2004)

Director's Ritual Journal
Observations and notes from the "Initiations" Lab

 


The DVD

 


(2004; 84 min., digital video; B&W, color)

CLICK IMAGE FOR ORDERING DETAILS

 

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