It’s about oral history:
George tells Ben he forgot his heater. They’re strangers, it’s the elevator. George says he used to be an electrician until he got electrocuted. He shows Ben the scars. Says it felt like a lightning, 400 volts. There’s the ding and slide and separation and that’s that. There’s Ben off the elevator, moving on, cello behind.
But that ain’t that. There’s Ben telling that story to me. Retelling George’s words. Passing along that information, experience, connection.
It’s about oral history.
At the Vanishing Point by Naomi Iizuka, directed by Les Waters and with an original score by KY-native Ben Sollee, melds concepts of storytelling with myth and gives voice to the historic community of Louisville’s Butchertown. The play brings together ghosts of the past and snapshots of the present, based on extensive interviews and local research. It’s a biography of geography. How place is warped and changed with years, the 1937 flood, a rerouted Beargrass Creek, the meat-packing industry business (hints “butcher”), the people who’ve moved in and out of the area and continue to do so.
There will be monologues. What we continue to notice. What’s let go of. Untangling of a dense past, distant lives.
There will be cello, fiddles, looping electronics, an other-worldy soundscape.
There will be that place just beyond the edge, right along the vanishing point.
*At the Vanishing Point runs at Actors Theatre from Jan. 27 - Feb. 15, 2015. Run time is 1 hour and 30 minutes. Tickets are $25 - $59.00 and can be purchased online or at the door.
