atlas of depression
What is depression? What is it here, and what is it now? In a world obsessed with the poles of breakdown and miraculous recovery, what is the daily living of mental illness? And if we pay close enough attention, what does awareness of mental illness ask us to recognize about abuse, class, race, power…? What is this thing?
Performed in a landscape of living rooms, Atlas of Depression is a verbatim documentary performance-cum-listening-party of diverse voices from a community— in this case, students at Carnegie Mellon University.
I interviewed students over three semesters at CMU, wrote a script combining our verbatim conversations with practical research into the neurochemistry of depression and anxiety, programmed in-ear-monitoring and synchronization of design elements, built an electronic gamelan of robot-arm coffee mugs, directed and choreographed the piece, and performed live.
Created by Eben Hoffer
Set by Selby Souza
Lights by Shawn Nielsen
Video by Joseph Amodei
Sound by Joshua Brown and Eben Hoffer
Costumes by Claire Mildred
Carnegie Mellon University, Winter 2019