Find out more about PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE !
World premiere production at HERE September 12-30 2023!
PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE is a show that invites audiences into the guts of the theater. Patrons enter the show through portals draped with fabrics and corridors dimly lit by chandeliers. Are they entering into a séance? After piercing many veils, the audience arrives at what is apparently a tiny, haunted proscenium theater. Anticipation mounts as a grand curtain opens with fanfare… and then another… and then a further curtain… and then the curtains keep opening and closing, revealing and concealing characters, objects and scenes in hypnotic patterns, transporting performers and audience to psychic realms. As this dance of curtains ascends to abstraction, creatures of knots and thread emerge from the shadows, protagonists are absorbed into set dressing and scenic ornaments run rampant. The theater digests and incorporates its prey.
The abstract, hallucinatory world of PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE—simultaneously a séance, a sculpture, and a live action screen saver—creates a space for you to recalibrate your attention. PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE invites you to experience mystery and mental spaciousness by way of that most basic of theatrical machineries—the curtain reveal.
PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE is created, written, designed, and directed by Normandy Sherwood. It features composition and sound design by Craig Flanagin, scenic and rigging design by Daniel Allen Nelson, curtain and costume design and construction by Normandy Sherwood, and lighting design by Christina Tang. The creative team includes production manager Daniel Allen Nelson, sound engineer Travis Wright, and line producer Caitlin Adams. Conceptual collaborators include Craig Flanagin, Daniel Allen Nelson, Christina Tang, Nikki Calonge, and Ean Sheehy.
PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE is performed by Ean Sheehy, Nikki Calonge, Daniel Allen Nelson, Kate Brehm, Adrienne Swan, and Elyse Durand with musicians Craig Flanagin and Normandy Sherwood.
PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Additional support is provided by The Dime Community Bank Fund for NYC Theatres, a program of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York); Mental Insight Foundation; NYSCA-A.R.T./New York Creative Opportunity Fund (A Statewide Theatre Regrant Program); Puffin Foundation. This work was commissioned by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation and received artist residency support from Collapsable Hole, HERE, Millay Arts, and Yaddo.