Ultratheatre: Volume 1 [The Sarcoma Cycle + Nasim Bleeds Green] drops from 11:11 Press on 6/5/24, the same day The Sarcoma Cycle opens in Chicago.
Order Ultratheatre: Volume 1 here.
Tickets + details about Sarcoma Cycle production here.
“According to McLuhan, technology is the extension of our nervous systems. If aesthetics, as I claim, is the study of perception and affect as fundamentals of this neural growthspurt, its cathexis—that is, the social technology by which aesthetics can be harnessed, shaped, wielded and channeled—is theatre. Theatre is, in summary, performed applied aesthetics, and this is one of the reasons why its theory and practice have become so virtually indistinguishable from each other as to constitute the makeshift limits of The Real. ‘Theatres are founded to test or exemplify a theory’, writes Gerould, and so they operate as basically laboratories where hypotheses about reality and experience are honed via controlled, repeat performances—with no assurance of success. Similarly to the way in which a lab could be described as an experimental space for the design, building and testing of new technologies, the theatre is a laboratory for the research and development of new, extended nervous systems.
This is undeniably a trying task, and so the currency of theatre that’s practiced in this form is trial and terror: the plausibly unsurvivable aesthetic experience. In the same way in which, in Berry’s words, Butoh begins in the brainstem (and is, given its extremity and physicality, legitimately dangerous), Nasim Bleeds Green and Nanoblade (1998), Spring Break (2020) and The Mourning Light (2050)—the three plays that, in no particular order, comprise the so-called Sarcoma Cycle—have been written and should only be staged in this spirit”
from Mónica Belevan’s foreword to the book, “Transduction of the Tragipanic”
Contents. Book design by the mighty Mike Corrao.
ULTRATHEATRE
– In conversation with Matthew Kinlin at Full Stop:
MK: If you could offer a manifesto for Ultratheater, what would it be? And can you expand further on the Sarcoma Cycle? I know in Transmissions to Artaud you called for a move towards an unnatural theatre.
LB: A manifesto is forthcoming, but here’s a provisional stab at a description: Ultratheatre attunes to the hyperbaroque structures undergirding contemporary society and attempts to dramatize them in relation to cosmic forces like sex, death, delirium, dreams, and time. Its toolkit is vast. It avails itself of all historical theatrical movements, incorporating them as gestures and textures, rather than monolithic templates. (It’s no longer enough to perform an “absurd” play, for example—who gives a fuck?—absurdism is a strategy that can be used and abandoned in an instant.)
It also avails itself of theatrical aspects of twenty-first century that haven’t been well-integrated into theatre: public relations; self-presentation online; memetic feedback loops; perception management; groupspeak, doublespeak, and wrongspeak; the staginess of reality via algorithms, focus groups, psy-ops, social media, and statecraft. Ultratheatre isn’t producing plays about these subjects necessarily (though it wouldn’t be a problem if it did); rather, it takes formal cues from them, incorporating their structures and dynamics to create something fresh and vital, in a specifically theatrical idiom.
It’s a mammoth, fractalizing aesthetic and thoughtform. It’s not “against” anything, especially naturalism. Naturalism is an excellent modality for setting the stage and letting the audience settle into the rhythm of a play, before the winds change, the maenads scream, and the ritual commences.
– In conversation with Evil Thespian.
art by Steak Mtn
SARCOMA CYCLE
logo by Steak Mtn
“Art happens within the realm of speculative tragic abstractions, a never ending flesh/data feedback loop where digitalized data and undigitalizable flesh inform each other in a process of reciprocal re-animation. Abstract tragedy belongs in this teleoplexic flow of abject transcendence initiated long ago through the via negativa of the mystical writers, later exemplified by Antonin Artaud’s cruelty (the unrelenting agitation of a life that has become unnecessary, lazy, or removed from a compelling force, in Nathan Gorelick‘s words), Georges Bataille’s joy before death, Samuel Beckett’s absurdity, or Sarah Kane’s dark internal landscapes.”
from Germán Sierra’s introduction to the Sarcoma Cycle, “Ultratheater as Abstract Tragedy”
THE SARCOMA CYCLE explores alienation, violence, and technology in three time periods and locations: 1998 in Cook County Hospital; 2021 in Canton, Michigan; and 2050 in River City, Chicago. Berry first drafted the plays in notebooks while helping his mother through her blood cancer treatment and stem cell transplant. They reflect the intimate context in which they were written, as well as the grandiose ambitions of a writer reckoning with our strange times.
“Cancer is not what these plays are about, it is what they are, or at the very least, what these plays mimic, in a way that resonates with how Klossowski described writing The Baphomet ‘as if I were describing a play that I was watching’. If, as Berry warns us in the introduction to Nasim, his ‘characters aren’t characters: they’re deepfakes wearing actors’, the role of cancer in his plays does not correspond to that of a protagonist or even an antagonist. It is, in fact, that of an agonist: the substance that, when met with a receptor, sets off the physiological response; the muscle the contraction of which triggers the body electric. Anyone who understands how cancer moves—both its subversiveness and its explosiveness—will have no difficulty seeing this shape in Berry’s artful snake-handling of heat death. His mise en abyme includes his own performance as a playwright, his own grappling with the scope creep of his matter, which is Mimesis itself. The motifs in the plays are not just copied—as shown by the reams of memespeak in the dialogue—they are corrupted copies of themselves.”
Another quote from Belevan’s foreward.
1. Nanoblade 1998
“Set in the Cook County Hospital during a technological overhaul in medical practice. Romance, chaos, and madness ensue.”
Cook County Operating Theatre
Cook County Hospital Staff with “Protection” statue by Charles Umlauf
“Protection” in storage
2. Spring Break 2020
“A multimedia grand guignol set during the Covid lockdowns.”
RIP Jayden Peters (2004-2020)
(L to R): Jake Flum, Electra Tremulis, Dylan Fahoome. Gif by Joe Goudreault.
3. The Mourning Light 2050
“Set in River City, Chicago, in the distant future. About the family of a tech CEO who’s invented a program to communicate with the dead in Virtual Reality. Prophecies from another realm threaten to tear the family apart.”
“Algorithms were initiated in the flesh, and they keep some preference for it. The digital kids in Spring Break 2020, the mother and daughter in The Mourning Light 2050 (she speaks polyphonically, her voice composed of many human & inhuman parts), the Cronebergian surgeon of Nanoblade 1998 (Imagine a zero degree/A perfect problem space/To envisage every possible/Possibility/To cross-reference Everything/With Everything/A tabula rasa/Upon which we perform/Some Godhead Calculus) —all of them are summoning the digital Dionysus that lurks in the postdigital universe. In terms of communicative mode(l)s—Dan and Nandita Mellamphy wrote—, the contagious or virulent aspect of today’s “viral media” can be understood as Dionysian because its mode of expression proceeds by way of the positive amplification of information. In this sense, the furious springbreakers, mourners, and necromantic brain butchers in The Sarcoma Cycle would be, like the original Furies, the cruel accomplices of Dionysus in his way to amplify not just information, but experience; in reminding us that the audience should be not entertained but abducted.”
Another quote from Sierra’s intro.
PRODUCTION
THE SARCOMA CYCLE opens in Chicago on June 5. It runs in repertory at the Color Club till July 13.
Per the dramaturg Jessie McCarty: “The Sarcoma Cycle represents a wheel – a rotating allegory of medicine, mental trauma, violence, and theater as an ultra-performance.”
Poster by HATE/LAB, sigils by Gannon Reedy
From the press release:
“Director/playwright Logan Berry presents the world premiere of THE SARCOMA CYCLE, a new trilogy of plays, opening at the Color Club in June, 2024. Co-produced with The Runaways Lab Theater, HATE/LAB, and 11:11 Press, THE SARCOMA CYCLE is the first repertory production in Chicago in over a decade, and will provide audiences a maximalist feast for the senses.
Each play features the same seven actors: Jake Flum, Dylan Fahoome, Gwen Hilton, Philip Johnson, Daniel Mozurkewich, Electra Tremulis, Sara Zalek.
With costume design by Ruth Forberg, videography by Joe Goudreault, choreography by Nina Feliciano, intimacy choreography by Maddie Baird, fight choreography by Michael Saubert, stage management by Steak Richardson, sound design & music by Nick Meryhew, dramaturgy by Jessie McCarty, AI Avatars by DeepSnakes (Karina Bush and Daniel Harlow), programs by Mike Corrao, and artwork by Steak Mtn and Gannon Reedy.”
The plays will run on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights. Then, for the final two Saturday performances (6/29 and 7/13), All three will be presented in a marathon that begins at 2 pm and ends at 10 pm. Curiously, the marathon performances are the biggest sellers so far and will likely sell-out. People seem game to test their endurance, to be completists, to be maximalists, to go big, and perhaps you are too?
Entering the Color Club (photo by Gwen Hilton)
Cast (L to R ): Philip Johnson, Daniel Mozurkewich, Dylan Fahoome, Jake Flum, Steak Richardson, Sara Zalek, Electra Tremulis and Gwen Hilton
Credits & character breakdown for each play.
Some props
Crew (L to R ): Nick Meryhew, Steak Richardson, Ruth Forberg, Joe Goudreault
“Sarcoma cancer can grow anywhere in the body. In 1-8 percent of cases, sarcoma may
cause metastasis in the brain, dying as soon as 12 months.The life cycle of a successful brain death consists of three stages: coma, absence of reflexes, and apnoea. There are many ways for the body to end and begin. Every waiting room is a stage, and so is every office, every bedroom.”
From Jessie McCarty’s dramaturgical booklet “THE SARCOMA CYCLE: an indexed dramaturgy”
NASIM BLEEDS GREEN
Libretto for a Workout Opera in Hell led by Nasim Sabz w/ backup dancers David Buckel & Malachi Ritscher & a chorus of barnyard animals.
“Constructed as an opera, Nasim’s arc is a Greek one, the signs of her tragic downfall evidenced early in the show. As she parades her crew of farm animals around, her glamorous presentation of martyrdom eerily devolves into conspiratorial deadpan as she makes her case to an imagined jury that her demonetization on YouTube is the equivalent of depriving her of the ability to speak. In reality, it is the equivalent of losing her stage and audience – nonetheless equally traumatic for Nasim. In hell, which at times resembles a prison as the character Security Camera follows Nasim around prompting her to shout “Praise thee, Security!”, Nasim has a second chance to become what she couldn’t on Earth: a star.”
From Dylan Fahoome’s introduction “Ecstatic Theater”
1. Nasim
“A woman who shot three people and then killed herself at YouTube’s headquarters near San Francisco has been identified locally as a ‘vegan activist’ who claimed the company had censored her videos.
Nasim Aghdam, who used the name Nasime Sabz on Instagram and Facebook appeared to bear a grudge because she was no longer getting money from YouTube video hits, the Mirror reports.”
Digital Solanas
According to the coroner’s report, Nasim died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound through the heart. She injured three by gunfire. The only life she took that day was her own.
Nasim’s final post on her Instagram.
2. David Buckel
“On 14 April 2018, lawyer and environmental activist David Buckel burned himself to death in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in what has been called the first self-immolation in the name of climate change. Yet, few people have heard about his final, extraordinary act of protest and even fewer people witnessed it. Some in the press and the attentive public, conditioned by conventional dramatic expectations, have critiqued Buckel’s protest as a failed performance. However, drawing from Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theatre, I propose that climate change—causally diffuse, non-linear, slow-moving and often invisible—presents, among other things, a challenge to dominant modes of perception. I argue that, when viewed through a postdramatic lens, Buckel’s self-immolation successfully interrupts our politics of spectacle, gesturing towards a new aesthetic for environmental activism that eschews conventional dramatic narratives and decenters the human.” – Victoria Scrimer
Buckel’s husband, Terry Kaelber, reflects on his death in the Washington Post.
3. Malachi Ritscher
“On November 7th, the Chicago Reader published an article by Peter Margasak titled ‘Malachi Ritscher’s apparent suicide.’ The Nation later reported: ‘With an American flag draped over his head, and a sign that read Thou Shalt Not Kill. As Ye Sow So Shall Ye Reap. Your Taxes Buy Bombs and Bullets, he lit himself on fire.” A video camera on a tripod was found at the scene. Ritscher documented his own suicide.” – Marc Fischer in Public Collectors
Photo from Ritscher’s blog Savage Sound
“Although technically an amateur, Mr. Ritscher was well known in Chicago for making meticulous, high fidelity recordings at hundreds of live music events from the mid-1980s (perhaps earlier) until his death in 2006. This collection of recordings, now a part of the Creative Audio Archive, is a unique record of musical development in Chicago during a particularly fertile period, a history that resonates to the present.”
From the Experimental Sound Studio’s website, where Ritscher’s recordings are archived.
Nasim Bleeds Green was workshopped at Oggi Gallery, Chicago, from November, 2019 till Friday, March 13, 2020, when the Covid-19 Pandemic prematurely ended the rehearsal process. It was produced by The Runaways Lab Theater and Margo Rush and was partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
It was directed by Logan Berry; with choreography by Seraphina Violet Cueller and Sara Zalek; the poster and logo were designed by Gannon Reedy; costumes by Ruth Forberg; and the score was composed by Nick Meryhew; the cast included: Dylan Fahoome, Ronen Kohn, Jo Schaffer, Niky Crawford, Sara Zalek, Seraphia Violet Cueller, Electra Tremulis, and Nick Meryhew.
WEBSITES
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p.s. Hey. This weekend the blog red carpets itself to clear a pathway for this really fascinating new book by Logan Berry, published by the always great 11:11 Press. I’m reading it at the moment, mesmerised. And if by some relative miracle you’re in or near Chicago right now, you can go see the live theatrical component of the book. Info/details in the post. Lots of riches up above, and do investigate and enjoy them. My thanks to Logan and 11:11 for the privilege. ** Lucas, Hi. Well, that vet stint seems like it provided plenty of internal organ viewing. (I’m strangely a bit squeamish despite my reputation). I’m endeavoring to bring Ochs to the blog. I’m okay. ‘News from Home’ is great, one of her very best, I think. She’s fantastic. As a Francophile since the age of, gosh, early teens or earlier, I can recommend the effect of that philia on your existence. Nice: the piano. I used to play guitar — I was in bands in high school — and I think about picking that back up sometimes, but I never will. Having to re-develop those callouses on my fingertips is too daunting. It does look pretty where you are, it just does. Paris has some nice parks (Butte Charmont!), so I’m not totally bereft. Yes, are you still maybe heading over here? I like Germany fine, I just think Berlin is kind of overrated. That pink slide in that garden is gorgeous. Garden’s nice too. And not to mention the cat. It looks deliciously both evil and like a lucky charm. I’ll spare you a photo of the very messy desk I am looking at when I’m not looking at a screen, but you can easily imagine it. Happy weekend! ** _Black_Acrylic, Thek is the man. My friend the writer Andrew Durbin who doubles as the editor of Frieze Magazine is just finishing up writing his big biography of Paul Thek, which I am very excited about. I’m getting good vibes off the Red Bull acquisition for whatever that’s worth. I forgot about ‘Pearl’. Cool, I need a solid horror. Thanks, buddy. ** Bill, I thought you might, but it’s always foolhardy to presume. But yay. Brian Evenson about an amusement park ride? I’m there. I’m sold. I just got his new book, or one of his new books, at least. The Black Square Editions one. Is that the one you were talking about? ** Cletus, Hi, Cletus. Speaking of your book — congratulations! — it just arrived in my mailbox yesterday in a very distressed looking package the had a sticker on it announcing that it had been opened and rummaged through by the international border police, but the book was still there. I’m really looking forward to reading it. You have a good weekend too. ** Paolo Iacovelli, Hi, Paolo! Welcome! I’d love to read your novel. Write to me at [email protected], and you can either send me a pdf there or I can give you my mailing address. Thanks a lot! I really look forward to it. Bestest wishes. ** Steve, Glad to see ‘better’ in that sentence. I’m a little sneezy and spacey too, but in my case it’s just the late arrival of spring and its little allergies. I’ll look for ‘T Blockers’. Sounds intriguing. Weekend … I’m supposed to help a friend edit her short film today, but I haven’t heard from her, so I’m not sure. Tonight’s my biweekly Zoom book/film club meeting. I/we watched ‘The Vanishing’ (1988), which I thought was tiresome, and we read some Deleuze, which was great. And I’ll work on the new script. And maybe see the new Carax film with him in attendance. That’s it, so far. Feel much better! ** Harper, Hi, Harper. Yeah, agreed again. People who look at you look like you’re insane aren’t really looking at you, they’re just seeing the surface of their eyeballs, but I think you know that. I read ‘A Season in Hell’ when I was fifteen, and I remembering thinking, ‘Cool, I still have three years left to write my ‘Season in Hell’, haha. Remember that he had to wade through a lot of shit too. As did I. You’ll conquer it, for sure. ** Dev, Hi Dev, good to see you! My mother’s last words to me were, ‘My biggest regret is that I didn’t teach to earn a lot of money’. So there you go. Two weeks already. Nice, nice! I’m not swimming, but I am watching large crews of official looking people try desperately to make the Seine swimmable by the start of the Olympics. I didn’t know what an incremental game was until I just looked it up. And I still don’t think I quite get it. I’ll try playing one so I can get a grasp. I see there’s one called ‘A Dark Room’. That sounds intriguing. Enjoy that, and maybe I’ll join you in that enjoyment. Great to see you! ** Darby, New car! That’s massive! Where have you driven it so far? Road trip! Failure is on may weekend agenda. Hopefully the music kind and not the non-music kind. Duh, ‘Planet of the Apes 3’. I still haven’t seen it, and I really, really want to. Like, badly. Have a cruisy weekend! ** MADONNA VENABLES, Thank you. I will look up ‘Take Hart’. Even though they have terrible taste in pictures obviously. Haha. The joke. Hahaha. Thanks! ** ‘The elephantman’s daughter and the premier Inn waiter’, Nice reply there. And thank you! ** Justin D, Hey, JD! Glad you liked it. My dad loved beige. So did my mom. Our whole house was beige. Their cars were beige. It was weird. I should have done something with the sweaters, you’re right. I think I burned a few of then, but not for the sake of art. This weekend … I told Steve up above what this weekend seems like it will consist of for me if you’re curious. More importantly, what about yours? Except in the past tense by the time I read it. I just listened to the beginning of the Mint Julep track. It’s beautiful. I’ll finish it in a minute. Shoegaze 4ever. Thank you. And funny/curious because, relatively speaking, I listened to this old, favorite song of mine about seven times in a row yesterday. ** Uday, Hi. Oh, well, there should be, yeah. Vapes should be newfangled bongs. There’s not reason why they can’t be. Much agreement about gifts. When I used to really like someone, I’d give them a gift for each of their senses: hearing, taste, sight, touch, and smell. It was a guaranteed hit gift. I like other identities too, but, yeah, not when it involves personal sadism. Did you finish the draft? My weekend will fall somewhere in between fun and shy. Just a guess. Enjoy your meals and all and sundry! ** Oscar 🌀, Whew. Glad to know my hopes are powerful. Or at least that one. Fred Flintstone! I’m honored! When I was in 6th grade, my best friend was this really creative boy who built a life-size replica of the town of Bedrock in his backyard. We used to sneak into one of the boulders/buildings and smoke pot and kiss. I just picked up a bag of potato chips and crunched it until I was sure I heard it crunchily say ‘Hi Oscar’ which took about an hour, which is why this post is appearing a little late today. I’ve heard that about livers! I guess it makes sense? Have you ever eaten liver? My god, it’s most horrible tasting thing in the world, or I thought so back when I ate meat. Apologies if you like the taste of liver. Right, we did share pub ennui, that’s right. See, now that sounds perfectly acceptable: you and your friend’s stint there. I’m sure the cider helped. I like Paul B. Preciado’s stuff. I don’t think Ive read that one, though. I’ll hunt it. Cheers, as you UK guys say. I am angling for us both to have weekends that we can tell our imaginary grandchildren about. ** Right. Give your all to Logan Berry’s book and work over the weekend while you’re in this area. Thank you! See you on Monday.
Now available in North America 
