Normandy Sherwood’s Psychic Self Defense to Open HERE’s 30th Season

HERE will open it’s 30th anniversary season with the world premiere of Normandy Sherwood’s Psychic Self Defense. Performances will run from September 12-30 in the HERE Mainstage Theater, with an official September 15 opening.

Psychic Self Defense will be performed for intimate audiences of only 44 people. A presentation of HERE’s Dream Music Puppetry program, the piece is described as follows: “Psychic Self Defense is a show that invites audiences into the guts of the theater. Patrons enter the show through portals draped with fabrics and corridors dimly lit by chandeliers. Are they entering into a séance? After piercing many veils, the audience arrives at what is apparently a tiny, haunted proscenium theater. Anticipation mounts as a grand curtain opens with fanfare… and then another… and then a further curtain… and then the curtains keep opening and closing, revealing and concealing characters, objects and scenes in hypnotic patterns, transporting performers and audience to psychic realms. As this dance of curtains ascends to abstraction, creatures of knots and thread emerge from the shadows, protagonists are absorbed into set dressing and scenic ornaments run rampant. The theater digests and incorporates its prey.”

Psychic Self Defense is performed by Ean Sheehy, Nikki Calonge, Daniel Allen Nelson, Kate Brehm, Adrienne Swan, and Elyse Durand with musicians Craig Flanagin and Normandy Sherwood. Sherwood writes, designs, and directs the production.

The creative team additionally includes sound design by Craig Flanagin, scenic and rigging design by Daniel Allen Nelson, curtain and costume design and construction by Normandy Sherwood, and lighting design by Christina Tang.