Studies of a Figure in Green – Chapter 1 takes aim at humanity’s most passionately confused fantasies about the natural world. Told through a chorus of three voices trapped between ecstatic communion and brutal self-examination, this is a performance about intimacy with nature and the need to belong.
Blending documentary and fiction, the piece draws on the experiments of 1960s CIA agent Cleve Backster, who attached a lie detector to his office plant, claiming to unlock its “inner life”. This curious moment, in between science and mysticism, inspired a performative language that dreams of communication with all living things, while revealing how this desire is haunted by an instinct to dominate.
