Projects

The Weight of Air

The Weight of Air is a contemporary puppet performance illuminating the effects that invisible processes have on the personal, psychological, and topographic landscapes of the City of Detroit. Using historic research, travelogs, maps, and community-recorded interviews of city residents, firefighters, and public school teachers, this show aims to inspire discussions in a city whose infrastructure is currently being “redeveloped” about where resources should be put, whose lives are worth investing in, and how those investments take place.

Beginning a production process in the fall of 2019 with collaborations, trainings, audio interviews and puppet brainstorm sessions, parts 1, 2 and 3 of this work have slowly emerged, as we understand that this is not one show, but multiple shows—just as these are not isolated individual incidents in history, but multiple repetitions of the same, or similar, events.

 
An indoor multi-media performance, including props, actors, and light projectors displaying text, with performer and puppeteer Torri Ashford reading scripted material to a seated audience.
An indoor multi-media performance, including props, actors, a puppet dressed as the Monopoly man, and light projectors displaying text, with the performer and puppeteer Torri Ashford reading scripted material to a seated audience.
A low light indoor performance, with performer and puppeteer Torri Ashford opening and peering into a box-shaped container with a glowing white light emanating from it.
An indoor multi-media performance with seated audience, including props, three performers holding up a puppet of a Detroit fireman with a long white ladder, moving toward a two-dimensional backdrop of a house.
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