'I don’t even know you anymore, I’ve lost track of your daily routine, don’t know anything about what you fancy these days, if you still like your coffee with a lot of milk or if you can actually stomach it black now, if you still have a hard time getting up in the morning and getting to bed at night, if you still wear that stupid Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt to bed that I used to love and now I hate. No, don’t hate. Miss, more than anything. If your sweat still lingers in your bedroom after that one terribly drunk night, if you still play videogames for days on end, if you forget to eat. I’m not there to remind you, but someone else is. I don’t even know who. Do I? Do you still play your Gibson in the kitchen? Do you tell her not to wear glasses? Does she sit on your lap in a recording studio somewhere, trying to be cool? Do you touch the back of her neck when you hold her? Or is there maybe no one? Am I just reading into a Facebook picture that actually reveals nothing? Fuck me. I don’t know. Because I don’t know you anymore.'
© Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir
The performance raises themes of obsession, honesty, loss and that unobtainable ideal of romantic love that has consumed so many teenage lives. [...] The piece questions the sincerity of both the relationship being examined and the sincerity of sharing it through performance, drawing an intelligent parallel between the two. |
Chet Baker, Love is an attempt at closure. How do you end a relationship that never was, yet spans a decade? If only we had said something at the time. If only we hadn‘t said anything ten years later..
A (de-)construction of a real life relationship, Chet Baker, Love explores the ideals of love, the feeling of regret and first and foremost how a piece of music can define a relationship. Love is a fleeting memory. If only one could catch it, define it, make it into something tangible. Chet Baker, Love was originally written for a festival called EXEplorer and curated by playwright Emily Holyoake. It started as a straight forward monologue for one female but developed into a multi layered story of a real life relationship as Kolbrún began working with director Joshua Lucas on staging the work she had written and was about to perform. Joshua interviewed Kolbrún about the relationship at the core of the piece and from those interviews they started forming a mixture of the original monologue and her actual memories. The piece ended up being a fully deconstructed performance made up of the written word, off the cuff memories, song and a projector used to prompt all three. Written and performed by Kolbrun Sigfusdottir, directed by Joshua Lucas. |