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There’s So Much Mad in Me
Encore exclusive interview with choreographer Faye Driscoll
Photo: Christy Pessagno
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If your extent of dance production experience is The Nutcracker, you’re in for a surprise with a Faye Driscoll production. The director and choreographer who the New York Times called a “startling original talent” cares little for pampering her audience with tutus and classical music. Instead, she tackles subjects that seem unimaginable on the stage with raw and uncensored movements, most famously in 837 Venice Boulevard where she explored the construct of identity.
In her most recent production at Dance Theater Workshop, There is So Much Mad in Me, Driscoll takes on humanity’s inexplicable need to be seen and the complex states of extremes that ensue. Driscoll took some time to chat with Encore about the story behind it.
There is So Much Mad in Me explores voyeurism, the need to be seen and polarity of experience. Where did you find your inspiration for it?
Initially I set out to explore ecstatic states, but as I began looking at what conjured ecstasy, I found that it was completely entwined with suffering. So I began researching images from the media of people in all kinds of extreme states from religious rapture to torture to wrestling to talk-shows (I actually went to the Jerry Springer Show yesterday) and explore the similarities between the various extremes. I became interested in the ritual and performance of it all, the movements of mob and group consciousness and the historical compulsion to view other humans in pain and rapture.
Does it speak back to your acclaimed 837 Venice Boulevard?
I think there are definitely similarities, but the works are coming from opposite directions. In 837 Venice Boulevard, the personal act of looking to my childhood for answers became a metaphor for the human compulsion to place blame—whether with parents, lovers, society, or ourselves. In There is So Much Mad in Me, I have been looking outward to world events and pushing the limits of my own tolerance to view what’s outside my comfort zone, or I think I cannot understand, and then trying to extract what is personal and intimate.
There seems to be polarity in the production itself. It’s such an internal and abstract subject performed with such external and physical vigor. How do the two coexist in your choreography?
They coexist inside the structure and musicality of the piece, in the way it stops and starts, repeats, resonates rhythmically and emotionally, leads us one way but then flips us around and messes with our expectations. The work follows a non-linear narrative that doesn’t demand justification or resolution, but through which I am attempting to open up a level of communication in which a viewer can revel in the paradox of the internal or abstract, and the external or literal.
How did the title come to be?
I overheard someone talking about a fight they had just had with their boyfriend, she was saying, “…there is just so much mad in me.”
So is it just a happy coincidence or intentional that the title is also your own little act of voyeurism?
I have to say it was just a strange and happy coincidence, but the irony is definitely not lost on me!
The topics you take on, including this one, are quite intense and commendably complex. What kind of choreography can we expect in this new production?
My performers are all so amazing and beautiful and they have to move through so much in this work—not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically. They go from ecstatic dancing, to fighting, to a talk show, to war rituals, to triumphant power-play partnering, to singing, to running, running, running. It is a very opulent viewing experience.
What would you love for your audience to take away from There is So Much Mad in Me?
I would like them to feel something, be uncomfortable and to laugh and invite them to live in the questions with me.
You’ve choreographed everything from a church performance to a one-woman Greek tragedy to productions such as this that take on the big stuff. What do you think it is about dance that lets it encompass such a wide variety of topics?
Dance can be a very powerful direct visceral communication. It connects us to an essential drama of being alive: having a body. Which means we are vulnerable, and mortal. The dance I am interested in is connected to this danger and vulnerability and not denying it or escaping it, but somehow thriving despite the dichotomy of this basic frailty.
And, finally, for a little fun: What keeps you up at night, besides choreographing, of course?
Coffee! If I drink it too late, and lately it’s Netflix and a major overdose of episodes of The Office.
There is So Much Mad in Me will be presented March 31–April 3, 7:30 p.m. at the Dance Theater Workshop. For more information, please visit www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/driscoll.