Naomi Bennett, MFA, PhD
pool
Conceived and directed by Naomi Bennett.
Created collaboratively with the performers: Li Feng, Jason Jedrusiak, Marlena Merrin, Shawn Paulling, & Brent Walton.
Original music by Clinton Degan.
Original poetry performed by Sarah Pearlstein.
Mobius, Boston, MA, January 2011
Performers Li Feng, Jason Jedrusiak, Marlena Merrin, Shawn Paulling, Brent Walton, and Clinton Degan in pool. Photos by Bob Raymond © all rights reserved.
Workshop performance of pool, Outpost 186, Cambridge, MA, November 2010.
Inspired by Mark Ravenhill's play pool (no water), pool explores themes of jealously, resentment, and emotional absence. An original performance drawn from the experiences of the cast and creative team, pool explores the dark feelings that linger at the edges of our thoughts – that we do not talk about – when we hate what we should love, feel resentment to what we should feel joy, or feel detached from what is most important.
Created collaboratively with the ensemble, with original music by Clinton Degan (of A Bit Much), and performance poetry by Sarah Pearlstein, Bennett combines theatrical forms of Interplay, Contact Improvisation, Butoh-inspired movement, original text, and video to move the audience through an abstract story of group mentality versus the individual expression and the dark (yet secretly exciting) world of resentment, jealousy, and emotional absence.