Three Screams

This was a livestreamed performance with multiple live cameras and interspliced with some pre-filmed footage. This was early 2021, before in-person performance had returned and the vaccine was slowly rolling out. It was very fun to play with unique POVs for the camera (the painting, a body on the floor, etc.), lighting, and projection.

The play rails against the myth of the suffering artist, while unpacking generational trauma and hereditary mental health struggles. It is composed of three monologues:

1) The Father, Edvard - Edvard is a failed painter, unable to gain recognition becuase his paintings were deemed too pleasant, completely lacking the angst of true artistry. He steals Munch's famous painting of The Scream as part of a heist. However, he gives his fellow thieves a fake and makes off with the original to record a manifesto and destroy it.

2) The Mother, Tulla - Tulla loved the simple beauty of Edvard's paintings. However, he's much too dark and distant now. She's wrestled with mental health problems for years, hers and her son's, and tonight is her breaking point. She bakes to avoid the fact that she's killed two thieves that defiled her house in deadly pursuit of her husband.

3) The Son, Gunnar - Years after losing both his parents, Gunnar resents how a fateful night with The Scream ruined his family and compelled his brother to success as a painter. But his brother paints toothless, beautiful paintings (much like his father) that Gunnar cannot accept as "good art," containing none of the suffering the brothers endured or the mental health struggles that Gunnar thinks should bring him artistic verve.