A Few Deep Breaths

May 20–22, 2022
Presented by La MaMa and CultureHub in association with Seoul Institute of the Arts

A Few Deep Breaths is a poetic reflection of this moment in our shared history and a meditation on the road ahead. A 77 year old and a 7 year old find themselves together, suspended in a liminal space where they begin to understand each other.

Taking place between physical and digital worlds, A Few Deep Breaths explores human nature through a ritual process that interweaves the writings of Erik Ehn, Huntrezz Janos, Adrienne Kennedy, Haruna Lee, Chuck Mee, Robert Patrick, Christopher Rivas, and music by Starr Busby, John Dyer, Justin Hicks and Woody Pak. Featuring Agosto Machado with puppetry by Tom Lee performed by Leah Ogawa and Maria Camia.

A Few Deep Breaths is produced within CultureHub and La MaMa’s Experiments in Digital Storytelling program, which incubates story-driven artworks that push the boundaries of artistic forms.

View the digital program.

A note on process:

A Few Deep Breaths was presented as a work-in-progress. The process began in June 2021, when La MaMa and CultureHub prompted 7 writers with the following questions:

• What is the essence of the human spirit?

• What are the god-like ingredients of the human spirit?

• What are the questions that we need to be asking right now as individuals or as a global community?

• How do we respond as artists at this time?

Each writer responded by generating 10 lines of dialogue or 5 actions for two characters: a 7 year old and a 77 year old.

The creative team behind A Few Deep Breaths then interwove the writers’ responses - some of which were shared with musicians who created new songs - to create a non-linear story, which was developed in collaboration with performer Agosto Machado, puppet artist Tom Lee, and puppeteers Leah Ogawa and Maria Camia.

La MaMa and CultureHub collaborated with artists at the Seoul Institute of the Arts to create a telematic scene that was presented live on Friday May 20th, 2022. The performers in Korea and New York interacted live and were connected using LiveLab, a collaborative performance tool developed by CultureHub.

A Few Deep Breaths was presented via a custom built streaming platform that was developed with creative technologists Aidan Nelson and Shawn Van Every. This platform allowed us to transmit the live performance to the audience in milliseconds. There were also interactive elements that were activated throughout the performance, making the audience an invaluable part of this experiment. The interactive features were as follows:

• A 2D lobby space that the audience entered at the beginning of the show in which they could share real time audio and video streams with other online audience members.

• A global messaging system that allowed the production team to send messages to the audience members.

• A chat area where the audience could respond to prompts and questions from the production team. During the telematic sequence the audience was asked -What would you destroy to make a new world? -The puppets in New York and Korea wrote down the audiences' responses in real-time, amplifying the liveness of the show.

• A feature which allowed the audience to toggle between two distinct video feeds using their spacebar. This was used at a point of the show when the narrative branched in two.

A Few Deep Breaths System Diagram

〈 PROJECTS