A Final Impossibility
Production History:
Sarasota, FL 2021: Gallery Performance, Staged Reading, MARA Studio | Gallery
Philadelphia, PA 2018: Workshop Production, Venice Island Performing Arts Center
Writer, Director, Designer
A Final Impossibility is a new performance work fictionalizing the real 1960s ghostpainting work of Pierre Mion for Norman Rockwell on a commission for NASA commemorating man's first journey to the moon. The work explores astronomical concepts of the fourth dimension, deep time, and legacy, as well as the social and political problems of space travel.
The following images document both the 2018 and 2021 productions, respectively.
Philadelphia Production, 2018
Sarasota Staged Reading, 2021
A Final Impossibility shifts in and out of focus between the unfolding narrative in Rockwell’s studio and a number of seemingly unrelated vignettes — lit only with a single, very narrow beam of light — each symbolically alluding to the reality of deep time. “Deep time” here is used to refer to the vast expanse of time which curves infinitely around and through us. These vignettes perform abstracted and obscured-view scenes of past, present, and future theatrical performances, in addition to pre-human, pre-colonial, human, and post-human events. They are meant to call our attention to the play as a performance itself: an atomically-small fraction of space-time spent together in the here and now of the event.
A Final Impossibility received its first workshop April 2018 at the Venice Island Performing Arts Center, with support from Shoe Box Collective and an incredible community of crowdfunders. Performed by Gorman Ruggiero, Cameron Delgrosso, Jessica Money, Zaki Hagins, Maya Knell, and Jame Esposito. Music by seawrecker. AFI received its next production, a gallery performance staged reading in Spring 2021 at MARA Studio | Gallery featuring Bob Trisolini, Casey Murphy, and Amber McNew.