PIVOT
The Puppeteers’ Institute for Visual and Object Theater
Roxanna Myhrum, Principal Investigator
PIVOT uses theater to explore philosophical, sociological, and humanistic questions through experiments in visual and object performance.
Inquiries typically start with real-life situations where verbal debate has reached its limit and can no longer advance understanding. Something deeper, or weirder, needs to disrupt fixed narratives and characterizations.
When we translate “stuck” arguments into constructed characters, handmade worlds, and fabricated situations, we reveal hidden possibilities, new perspectives, and alternative rules for existence.
We welcome new research proposals, residencies, fellowships, and other creative collaborations.
Past Investigations
Visualizing Whiteness
Whiteness is often coded as “neutral” in white-dominant societies. The presumed “invisibility” of whiteness has led to an imbalance in many cultural explorations of race and racism, where the burden of explaining racialized experience defaults to people of color. This allows whiteness to evade public scrutiny and remain mysterious.
These pieces experimented with ways to make whiteness visible and tangible in theatrical worlds and situations. Can whiteness be made tangible? Can a white-identified artist separate herself from white identity? Can self-and-whiteness be present at the same time, in dialogue with one another?
O, King
This piece explored white cognitive dissonance about racialized violence. Set to Berio’s “O, King,” we envisioned a character on an escapist ski vacation during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Signifiers of brutality and protest invade the landscape, until characters can no longer evade what they have previously ignored.
Swan
This piece explored the insidious power of white perfectionism. Inspired by the Ugly Duckling fairy tale, we created a found object / body puppet and played both the silent, fragile swan and its seductive, self-critical inner voice. In a violent confrontation, perfectionism ultimately shows its fangs.