The Group

The Group, a new performance piece created by Robert Quillen Camp and performed by Dodeska Performance Ensemble, is an Enacted Self-Empowerment Workshop that combines a charismatic leader with an immersive audio experience. Inspired by the largely American tradition of packaging and selling self-improvement, (from EST and the Landmark Forum to Norman Vincent Peale and The Secret), The Group takes its audience on a savagely wry headphones-guided soul journey and illustrates the negative potential of positive thinking.

Designed for intimate audiences of 15-20 people, The Group is an hour-long seminar led by an increasingly unsympathetic Group Leader. His voice (picked up through a wireless mic) is mixed into a vast, detailed sound world, featuring original music by composer Alec Duffy, delivered to the audience through wired headsets. As the audience sits in the power circle they find themselves observing each other at the same time as they are invited to retreat into their own private audio environment. The Group creates a non-community community among its audience and calls into question the usefulness of secular social groups that have commodified the roles once occupied by religious institutions.