THEY WHO SAW THE DEEP

LA, 2018

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They Who Saw the Deep was an open-world immersive performance based on the Epic of Gilgamesh. We staged it in an abandoned 17,000 sq ft space containing 33 rooms, and reimagined the epic poem's "deep" not as a forest but as a deteriorating urban dreamscape.

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Each of the 9 performers portrayed a different modernized version of the hero Gilgamesh. Drawing on over 50 source texts, we devised the trajectory of each Gilgamesh through the deep: they each mourn a loss, seek a version of immortality, fail, and return to the city. Like the poem, our heroes find immortality, unexpectedly, in their community. The existential search always brings us back, not to ourselves, but to each other.

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