Archive: Arts & Entertainment

The Performative Self™ announced Therapy As Performance, a new interdisciplinary performance series by acclaimed performance artist Leeny Sack. The first of the series will premiere at The Cherry Artspace, in Ithaca, NY, on January 19th at 7:00 p.m.

The first part of the series will consist of two public therapy sessions presented consecutively, conducted by Guest Therapists Kate Halliday, LCSW, Certified AEDP Therapist and Jeff Collins LCSW, with Leeny Sack as the Constant Client. These unscripted therapy sessions will exist in the simultaneous spheres of public performance and private therapy. The acknowledged presence of the audience will generate content and meaning. Experimental video artist, Rachel Ferro, will live-compose and live-project hyper close-ups of both the client and the therapists throughout. Dr. Sara Warner of Cornell University will facilitate the post-event discussion.

The implicit performativity of psychotherapy, in which the client performs the role of client/patient and the therapist performs the role of therapist, is here made overt, self-referential, and public. Notions of fixed and fluid identity, self-representation, agency and psyche/soul are embedded and exposed in the format of performed therapy sessions. The possibility of fictionalization in the perception of the audience is expected and welcome: is this true, is this scripted, is this "real"?

Therapy As Performance™ investigates the experience of the multiplicity of all our selves as the personae in a theatrical event. In this series, Sack reframes autobiographical solo theatre, explores self-representation, and continues her three-decade body of work, Performance as Medicine. Future iterations will include Embodied Dreamwork as Performance, Hypnotherapy as Performance, Astrology as Performance, Genetics as Performance, and Preparing to Die as Performance.

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