JANUS
Theatres of Archimagination

End of the West Collective

What if myth were not a lie, but a story truer than truth?

This preview screening and conversation with artists takes us backstage into the creative process of devising a new intimate dramatic work.

The story features an encounter with Janus, the two-faced and powerful yet limited deity of doorways. Destiny brings this god and a human together in a cave-like workshop, though they remain obscured from each other’s sight by a mortal veil. Making an opening for them to truly see each other will require a magic outside of either of their powers of creation.

This single story is told through different cultural expressions and developed through three different personal lenses, individual histories, and arts practices. Bharatanatyam, Indigenous art, modern theatre, and spectator participation coalesce to become creatively reborn in a theatrical womb-like cave – a specially designed theatre for one. Puppets, masked dancers, film, sound, shadow and light heighten the intimacy of encounter.

Within this sacred space Destiny is questioned and spectators are challenged to experience the embodied reality of myth.

This conversation is part of the Theatres of Archimagination contribution to SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible, as part of the Arts Letters & Numbers exhibition in the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.