ARTIST’S STATEMENT

“The theater, like the plague, is in the image of this carnage and this essential separation. It releases conflicts, disengages powers, liberates possibilities, and if these possibilities and these powers are dark, it is the fault not of the plague nor or the theater, but of life.”

Theatre and The Plague

Antonin Artaud, 1934

I love Theatre because I am insane.

Because I have rejected the idea of one truth, or one reality.

Because I know that everything I am is inexpressible simply with words, logic, or time.

Everything we are, have been, and will become- these facts are malleable. I have been taught through the subconscious of our society that the conventions of correctness encourage pain and rigidity. That the deeper sense of truth, of reality, lies in the spirit. The unscientific, frustrating essence of all people- that which is hypocritical, magical, and intrinsically strange.

Theatre is the place where the physical and the spiritual are forced to compete in ephemera- the place where walls crash down. Theatre is the moment when breathing entities are able to embody the deepest secrets of our collective psyche. The things we do not speak of saturate themselves into the Theatre. It is the place where everything is true, anything is possible, and all are worthy of debate.

The release of oneself from the bounds of “reality” is an imperative when the earth’s captors have forgotten themselves. When we have become complacent and adjacent to death- or, worst of all, apathy. It can give us things back we hadn't realized we lost.

That time we loved, or fucked, or fell asleep.

That day we betrayed ourselves so deeply.

That person we miss dearly.

That memory we attempted to forget.

It is only when we embrace the intangible, the emotional, the natural, the unrealistic, the insane, the magical, the ridiculous, the abject, the theatrical- that we can regain access to a profound piece of our souls.

The part that doesn’t feel joy or pain; Rather, the part that is universal.

The part that is alive.

Sophie Wheeless, 2025