BBC Special: “BigBlackOctoberSurprise”
“Special virtual presentation
REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater), Los Angeles, CA
October 22-31, 2020
Inspired by the novella DIE VERWANDLUNG (The Metamorphosis) and the short story “Ein Traum” (A Dream) by Franz Kafka, and Ovid’s METAMORPHOSEON LIBRI (Books of Transformations)
TEAM: Paul Outlaw (concept, performance, script); Sara Lyons (direction); Jonathan Snipes (sound design); Adam J. Thompson (video design)
Produced by OutlawPlay
Consulting Producer: Abby Marcus
The creation of this project was supported by financial, material and spiritual support from the Ucross Foundation, Whiting Foundation, Thymele Arts Incubator, Lincoln City Fellowship/Speranza Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the generosity of individuals from around the world.”
Somewhere in America, a white woman awakens to find herself transformed into something even more unsettling than a “monstrous vermin” (Kafka): a Black man...
“BigBlackOctoberSurprise”: a meditation on isolation, imprisonment and Anti-Blackness in America—not only in the first year of COVID-19 and uprisings, but throughout a history that began in the holds of the slave ships.
In 2020, African Americans faced persistent inequality and disenfranchisement, and the constant threat of violent death. In the final week before The Most Important Election in Our History™, as the nation went to the polls to elect The Most Powerful Man in the World™, this hybrid provocation combining live and filmed performance offered an alternate take on the Kafka-inspired reality of BBC (Big Black Cockroach).
This further metamorphosis was the first performance ever to be live-streamed from the REDCAT stage.
FROM THE PROGRAM NOTES: “In a COVID-free October 2020, a live audience would be sitting in the REDCAT auditorium in Los Angeles attending the world premiere of a full-length version of BBC (Big Black Cockroach), the Kafka-inspired play we workshopped here at last summer’s NOW Festival. Instead, you—possibly in New York, Berlin, Sydney or San Juan—are live-streaming BigBlackOctoberSurprise, a detour in this year of metamorphosis. Which part of this performance is a recording and what is happening ‘now’? Are these transmissions from the past or the present—or maybe even the future?”
- Paul Outlaw, writer-performer
“This piece is also a meditation on isolation—in its content, and how it was created, through computer screens and wobbly WiFi connections. Nearly eight months of quarantine is a strange new ingredient to add to our surreal cocktail of Kafaesque body horror. How do our relationships to our bodies and the world shift in extended isolation? It turned us inward, toward American ancestors buried just beneath our Black and white skin, between our ribs, behind our eyes. What ideas, what figures live there? What future will they lead us toward? History formulates us, festers inside us—whether or not we acknowledge it. It will survive doomsday alongside the humble cockroach. Our work is to listen to those voices that were ignored, buried alive, and let them lead us into the unknown.”
- Sara Lyons, director
“Gorgeous…the most exciting piece of distanced performance we’ve seen so far. Seemed to dive into the constraint rather than try to work despite or around it. Sensual and abject and paradoxically embodied. Begged wonderful questions of liveness, presence, time. Aesthetically queer and slippery and jagged. Can’t wait to see more!”
- Audience feedback
“Incredible. It was visceral, and powerful, and disturbing, and thought-provoking, and intimate, and moving. Beautifully written, produced, performed. And you drew such powerful connections between history and this moment, between the source material and lived experiences. I will be chewing on this one for a long time.”
- Audience feedback
“A production everyone should see.”
- Jeff Slayton, LA Dance Chronicle full review