GO FORTH draws inspiration from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a text originally intended to provide the deceased with a blueprint to the afterlife. Incorporating analog projections, singing, and dance, the work animates a series of burial vignettes. Excavating the 3,000-year-old series of spells and incantations, Schaal has created a new translation, focusing on the scroll’s central metaphor: the weighing of the heart. The audience enters through a photographic installation that provides an initiation into the mythological landscape of the work. The performance proposes burial not as erasure but as offering restitution and creating space for the presence of the absent, the longed for, and the imagined.
GO FORTH premiered at Performance Space 122’s 2016 COIL Festival in 2016.
For touring inquires please contact studio@knz.org.
TOURING
Ubumuntu Arts Festival, Kigali, Rwanda (2016)
LMCC’s River-to-River Festival, New York, NY (2016)
Wesleyan University, Middletown CT (2016)
International Contemporary Theater Festival, Cairo, Egypt (2017)
Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA (2017)
Stanford Live Arts April 2019
GO FORTH was commissioned by Performance Space 122 with support from the Jerome Foundation. GO FORTH was supported by a Nathan Cummings Foundation grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant and was developed through a Baryshnikov Arts Center residency with support from the Princess Grace Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Process Space Residency, PS 122 RAMP residency, and Bogliasco Fellowship.
CREATIVE TEAM AND COLLABORATORS
Justin Hicks, Christopher Myers, William Nadylam, David Thomson, Paul Pryce, April Matthis, Courtney Williams, Liz Sargent, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Greig Sargeant, Cornell Alston, Ashley Vellano, Alexander Symes, Cheyanne Williams and Naomi Saito.
PRESS
The New York Times / Ben Brantley
The New York Times / Laura Collins-Hughes
Deutschlandfunk / Von Andreas Robertz
WNYC / Leonard Lopate
The New York Times / Jennifer Schuessler
American Theater / American Theater Editors
Proof of Life – Artforum International on Kaneza Schaal and GO FORTH
