Sarah Lloyd | Lucija Klarić | Kamov Residency

Sarah Lloyd

→ www.prostorplus.hr/rezidencija/sarah-lloyd-and-andrea-crnkovic-near-life-experience

Sarah Lloyd is an interdisciplinary theatre artist and educator from the United States. After graduating with the degree in history from the College of Wooster Sarah pursued an interest in Theatre of the Oppressed, working for Art Corps teaching theatre for social change in Los Angeles. Afterwards, Sarah went on to investigate the teachings and methods of Augusto Boal with youth in Pierce County Juvenile Detention Center in Tacoma, WA, a lockdown facility for sexual offenders in Alachua County, FL, and in public schools in Gainesville, FL. In 2012 Sarah earned a MFA in Theatre Arts from Towson University. She has trained and performed with Double Edge theatre in Ashfield, MA, and worked with theatre companies such as: Kibism under the direction of Naoko Maeshiba, WhiteFlag Performance Group, The Acme Corp, Glass Mind Theatre, and the Collective at Fifty Seven Hundred. She has toured, performed, and trained in Baltimore, Boston, NYC, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland, Argentina, and Denmark. Sarah is originally from the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States where she grew up hiking in the Cascades Mountains and exploring the Puget Sound. This early influence of nature and wilderness has been an inspiration for much of Sarah's work as a theatre artist. Sarah's artistic work often uses imagery from nature to create dark, mysterious, and strange theatrical worlds that hope to unsettle and spark the audiences imagination and provoke questions about ones relationship to the world and oneself.

Near Life Experience

25.07.-21.08.2016.

Near Life Experience is a collaborative experimental theatre-installation that is being developed by Andrea Crnkovic (Prostor Plus, Rijeka, Croatia) and Sarah Lloyd (Fifty Seven Hundred, Maryland/Montana, USA). The piece is an exploration of the boundaries of conventional theatre forms in order to discover more efficient, intimate and active ways for the audience to engage with the work and its content. This is to leave the audience with a certain responsibility or, at the very least, thoughts about their own role within this exchange of concepts, about our social, cultural, moral, and political issues, that is theatre.

Through the snapshots of mundane situations in a life of an ordinary person, the piece explores global, modern life phenomena and its complexities. From the very personal perspective, two women artist will confront the burning themes of our times, such as inadequacy of any ordinary person to live up to expectations set by the societal machine  - which falsely prescribe the ideals one must live by- and to lead a happy and fulfilled life in these times of neoliberalism and consumerism, with all their social, cultural and political implications, side effects and by-products. Are we, as individuals, , too numb, alienated and brianwashed to induce any serious change? Is there a way out of this state of impotence?

Taping into irony, pop culture clichés, and humor, the work is conceived from personal struggles to find meaning, purpose, wellbeing, and hope while navigating through this digitalized, consumer saturated, competitive reality driven by devastating greed of corporate capitalism.

Intertwining live performance with text, video, strange sounds, and striking imagery, Near Life Experience will create an immersive and intimate journey for the audience, a journey that hopefully will inspire and bring the audience closer to their authentic selves.

Prostor Plus

→ www.prostorplus.hr

The Association Prostor Plus was founded in 2002 to meet and educate individuals in various performance practices. By operating in the field of informal education, self-education, independent culture and production, the Association has marked the cultural and social scene of the city of Rijeka, creating a specific way methodology of working (through education and authorship) that is recognized even beyond the Rijeka framework. Since 2016, it has been the organizer of the Festival of Contemporary Dance and New Circus - Periskop. In its activities, it cultivates the research and experimental principle of work that has emerged from productions such as "Zone", "Dissonanza sjećanje", the research "How do female artists live in Rijeka and its surroundings?" and the research of new Rijeka narratives as part of the project "Stories Behind Cities". Since 2019, in cooperation with the Benčić Youth Council and children, it has co-organized the Plesni zbirkus festival and implemented the Festivalska smišljaonica program.