About This Show
An Actor Prepares combines music, text, and physical performance in a fractured narrative about the journey of a peace activist turned suicide bomber. This journey becomes an everyman’s symbolic metaphor of voicelessness. It is subtle, powerful and unrelenting. By the end of the show, danger is no longer the ticking clock, but rather the feeling that we may just understand the tune of the bomber’s song and may even want to sing along.
Since it was first performed in 2005, James Adler and Nela Trifkovic have collaborated to breathe new life into this timeless tale of light and dark. In this collaboration the original text Adler has been adapted into the current work written and composed by Trifkovic and Adler. The outcome is a piece of cross-disciplinary political, fairytale performance art. Its central theme is the anger that comes from being voiceless and the connection between this experience and violence. Much of the impact of this piece lies in its score, which both layers music over the narrative and uses music as a narrative device unto itself.