I Feel Your Pain, Liz Magic Laser,
A Performa Commission, Produced by Performa.
Performance and single-channel video, 6 min excerpted from 80 min, 2011.
LINK TO PERFORMA 11

For Performa 11, Liz Magic Laser presented a new mixed-media performance, I Feel Your Pain, that restages America’s recent political contests as romantic drama. Drawing on a variety of agitprop theater tactics, particularly the Russian Constructivist idea of a “living newspaper,” the performance examines how emotion is used to establish authenticity on America’s political stage. Staged in a movie theater, I Feel Your Pain takes place simultaneously in the midst of the audience and on the cinema’s screen. Eight actors perform a sequence of scenes tracing the progression of a relationship using dialogues adapted from political interviews and press conferences. As the actors perform, selected footage from three cinematographers is projected onto the screen in a continuous live-feed while Laser acts as real time editor to produce a live film. Borrowing elements from historic “living newspaper” productions, the performance features live voice-overs, pantomime fight scenes, and mute commentaries by a clown.

I Feel Your Pain features actors Lynn Berg, Audrey Crabtree, Ray Field, Annie Fox, Kathryn Grody, Rafael Jordan, Liz Micek, and Ryan Shams. The video was made with producer David Guinan and cinematographers Alex Hadjiloukas, Collin Kornfeind and Matthew Nauser of Polemic Media; costume stylist: Felicia Garcia-Rivera; still photographer Yola Monakhov; technical crew: Will Chu, Brandon Polanco, Irwin Seow and Tristan Shepherd. The script includes editorial contributions from Scott Indrisek, Wendy Osserman, Jess Wilcox and Tom Williams.