Poison: A Solo Performance

Performed at Stanford behind Memorial Auditorium, on Marh 4, 2015

A site-specific meditation on perfectionism. A piece with multiple elements including voiceover, movement, singing, object work, and a graveside visit.

Excerpt:

It was very clear to me that there was a trapdoor to this nightmare room. God said that when we die we go to heaven if we’re good, and I knew (I hoped and prayed) that my dad was there now. All I had to do was be a good person, and wait patiently for death. I tried not to wish for it—suicide was a mortal sin—but I still looked forward to it. This life was just the holding pen.

And I think that, because I went to Catholic school, being a good person meant being a good Catholic, which meant being a good student. Being a perfect student. Being a perfect everything. I remember staying up long into the night crying once, because I had been sick at school and thought they had learned borrowing in subtraction that day. They hadn’t. But I had taught myself, and went to school the next morning with a sleepy superiority that was better than anything. I was doing it; I would make it up there.