Anachronism Effects

Performances by: Ash Kilmartin; Mel Deerson and Briony Galligan; Melody Paloma; MP Hopkins

This performance program, Anachronism Effects, explored the way ventriloquy performs a dislocation of body from voice in time and in space. The program borrowed its title from scholar Sarah Kessler's research into 'ventriloquial materiality' and ventriloquism's "enduring anachronism—its at once anticipatory and antiquated appearance." Anachronism Effects, featured new performances created for Ventriloquy by Ash Kilmartin; Mel Deerson and Briony Galligan; Melody Paloma; MP Hopkins.

Ash Kilmartin performed 'You, as a paragraph', a monologue for mediated voice, engaging the ventriloquial tropes of possession, dislocation, and the excessive physicality of (the at times seemingly autonomous and absurd) speaking voice.

Melody Paloma will de- and re-code a suite of Code Poems by Hannah Weiner, master ventriloquist and psychic host to corporeal and non-corporeal bodies alike, in collaboration with retired seafarers Neil Butt and Leigh Webster.

Mel Deerson and Briony Galligan traversed the theater curtain separating heaven from hell.

MP Hopkins read through himself some texts about speaking/voice/language and heard himself doing this reading to himself.