PLEASE DON’T GO
Please Don't Go is an essential performance that focuses on the relationship between time, attention, and expectation.
Inspired by the thinking of Byung-Chul Han, in particular his book The Burnout Society, the performance questions the paradox of contemporary freedom: the constant obligation to be active, visible, productive especially in our free time. In a cultural context in which boredom is avoided and ‘empty’ time generates anxiety, Please Don't Go proposes a radical and subtractive theatrical gesture.
Three performers cross the space in silence, in four stages back and forth. The journey, devoid of variations or recognizable “events,” lasts 35 minutes. The audience is invited to stay, not to leave, to sustain. The absence of climax or spectacle becomes a perceptual challenge: the threshold of attention cracks, boredom, frustration, and desire emerge.
In that slow and dilated space, another, non-productive time also opens up, leaving room for listening, contemplation, and thought.
Please Don't Go is an embodied reflection on resistance to entertainment and the possibility of restoring meaning to time that serves no purpose.
Please Don't Go is an essential performance that focuses on the relationship between time, attention, and expectation.
Inspired by the thinking of Byung-Chul Han, in particular his book The Burnout Society, the performance questions the paradox of contemporary freedom: the constant obligation to be active, visible, productive especially in our free time. In a cultural context in which boredom is avoided and ‘empty’ time generates anxiety, Please Don't Go proposes a radical and subtractive theatrical gesture.
Three performers cross the space in silence, in four stages back and forth. The journey, devoid of variations or recognizable “events,” lasts 35 minutes. The audience is invited to stay, not to leave, to sustain. The absence of climax or spectacle becomes a perceptual challenge: the threshold of attention cracks, boredom, frustration, and desire emerge.
In that slow and dilated space, another, non-productive time also opens up, leaving room for listening, contemplation, and thought.
Please Don't Go is an embodied reflection on resistance to entertainment and the possibility of restoring meaning to time that serves no purpose.