THE ABSOLUTE FUTURE

World Premiere at NYU Skirball Center on April 5-6, 2024
(in advance of the Great American Eclipse on April 8)

THE GREAT AMERICAN ECLIPSE

The Great North American Eclipse will occur on April 8, 2024, and will be visible to many people in the United States. During the eclipse, the moon will completely cover the sun casting a shadow on the Earth creating a breathtaking celestial spectacle. The duration of totality (total darkness) will be up to 4 minutes and 27 seconds. THIS IS VERY RARE and won’t happen again in North America for over 300 years. It is truly a remarkable spectacle and should not be missed.
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The Absolute Future was first developed with a Research and Development Commission as a part of the Live Arts Bard commissioning program at the Fisher Center at Bard (fishercenter.bard.edu), Co-Commissioned by NYU SKIRBALL Center, and with generous support from The Simons Foundation and is part of its “In the Path of Totality” initiative. (For more information, visit inthepathoftotality.org.) Other support for The Absolute Future includes Gibney’s Open Interval Residency Program. This work is supported by a technical residencies at the National Center for Choreography (NCCAkron); The Church at Sag Harbor; The Mercury Store; a Guggenheim Works-in-process residency at Bethany Arts Project; BAM; The Park Avenue Armory, where Raja Feather Kelly is an Artist in Residence. 

MORE ON THE ABSOLUTE FUTURE:

Led by our mission to broaden the space for unheard voices and repressed histories, 
 to bring into the theatre those sometimes left out, and to use theatre to provoke much-needed public conversations, The Absolute Future is an evening-length performance of Devised-Danced-Theatre, and Media that appropriates found material from documentary, film, television, and social 
media that deals with death, fear, and loneliness. The Absolute Future will be a thrilling and theatrical multiverse where these taboo topics can be exploited, examined, and entertained.

The Absolute Future can be described as a black comedy style, energetic, and surreal exhibition of people 
 being people, dealing with the things we fear most: Death and Loneliness. The Absolute Future uses text, movement, and media in a humorous, vibrant, and melodramatic 
way that resembles the comedy and absurdity of social media but ultimately fades 
away the facade of our candy-coated society revealing a story about our inability to 
 connect and the inevitability of loneliness.

We’re doing this because, for many of us, Death is the ultimate fear and loneliness is a difficult subject to address because it has such negative connotations in our intensely social world. But the truth is that wherever there are people, there is loneliness... but while Social media exacerbates this, we believe the Dance and Theatre can be an antidote. This work connects people.

The Absolute Future is a warning that begs us to examine how television and social media shape our 
social perceptions and our social interactions. The work celebrates how popular culture 
 brings us together and how popular culture can rip us apart.


Two major influences on this project are the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest 
 Becker and society's recent obsession with “The Multiverse”.

The Denial of Death is a 1973 book by Becker. The premise: human civilization is 
 ultimately an elaborate, symbolic defense mechanism against the knowledge of our 
mortality. Becker postulates: our social selves are an ”!immortality project,” whereby a 
 person creates meaning beyond their own life span. Immortality projects like Instagram, 
 Facebook, Etc. are ways people manage death and loneliness.


The Multiverse, a hypothetical group of multiple universes, is a helpful study for those struggling to connect, the idea of parallel universes with a parallel self can make sense of almost anything. 



the feath3r theory believes When our own reality is becoming increasingly impossible to endure, some often imagine an alternate self to see who has it worse. Some would say The Multiverse was born out of our increasing desire for escape and comfort.

Our work is based on the principle that we create Honest Reactions to Imaginary Situations - so by dramatizing these social scenarios of fighting death or combatting loneliness through dance and theatre, we provide a doorway to look much closer at what is often avoided or too heavy to process.

Using the feath3r theory’s signature style of Myth, Madness, Montage, and Melodrama to move from wildness and chaos to order and emotional resonance, our interest is in understanding how our world is falling apart and creating The Absolute Future that brings people together.