A Simple Art

Based on Raymond Chandler’s 1944 essay, our new play A Simple Art is a live, true-crime documentary looking at the 2014 murder of a California priest whom one of the Neo-Futurists involved personally knew. By syncing up interviews taken from Humboldt County with storytelling, dance, onstage analog devices, and repetitive tasks, three Neo-Futurists (Nessa Norich, Kyra Sims, & Alex Vlahov) scrutinize the human need for narrative. This new play “investigates” the region’s history, the marijuana industry, the Catholic Church, police procedure, and the crime itself, all in an attempt to explore why (and how) we construct stories from the chaos of reality. If you are the private detective of your own life, are you following the clues or simply building a narrative?