For Immediate Release – February 23, 2007
Media Contact – Alex Reagan, 503-860-9585, reaganal[at]yahoo.com

Liminal Falls in Love, Exercises Left, Right Sides of Brain

The Theory of Love
from Liminal Performance Group
Portland, Ore. – April 13 through April 29, 2007

Birds are suddenly appearing, and Liminal may have something to do with it.

Liminal’s latest original work has arrived, this time in the form of a traveling multimedia lecture-opera entitled The Theory of Love. The Liminal Love Theorists have been at the blackboard for over three years of research, testing, and experimentation into the hidden workings of Love. All of its constituents and behaviors have now been successfully identified and analyzed, and the resulting formula is no less than 100% pure Love. This is the stuff. Not tested on animals, this new mixed-genre product proves conclusively that everyone’s favorite emotion is more than mere hypothesis.

But hasn’t enough been said about Love already?

“It certainly has,” says composer and project leader John Berendzen, “and Liminal would like to have the last word.” The Resurrectory (2005) was a complex and relentless sonic investigation into Death. The Theory of Love wrestles down the only other great subject with equal passion and intensity.

Now available for mass consumption in a readily digestible musical lecture format, The Theory of Love begins its tour of public presentations aimed at educating the senses. Special host partners Reed College, Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), and Chapman Elementary School (NW) provide the multimedia classroom facilities appropriate for the Portland premiere undertaking. Future tour partners include On The Boards’ Northwest New Works Festival (Seattle, June 2007), and Links Hall (Chicago, Fall 2007).

Leading the public experiment are singers David Abel (bass) and Ms. Leo Chapeau (alto). Their syllabus/libretto (written by Abel) leads us down the corridors of Roland Barthes’ ravishing ruminations on the metaphysics of love, through the motherless monkey experiments of psychologist Harry Harlow (do we need love more than food?), and on to parts unknown. All throughout, the Loveplus video database informs the spoken and sung words with its imagery, turning information into beauty, and making beauty informative.

This classroom is no study hall, and Liminal assures audiences that there will be no risk of nodding off. Using alternative techniques of musical hypnosis for accelerated superlearning (pioneered by Soviet-bloc and Japanese researchers in the mid-20th century), audiences are invited into states of blissful, relaxed attentiveness as mind and sense hyper-saturate with full-spectrum vibrations of sound, light, and thought.

An experiment in harmonizing the poetic and the analytical, the sexy and the brainy, Love is a foray into a new form of communication, a full-body experience of sound, word, and image. As the frequencies of the left and right brain synchronize with each other and to the your environment, The Theory of Love presents solutions to the long-sought equation of Love to the conscious and subconscious mind. Finally, you are left to answer the question for yourself:

Love, is it just a theory?

The Theory of Love
a traveling multimedia lecture-opera
from Liminal Performance Group

Collaborators:

Mr. David Abel – bass, librettist
Ms. Leo Chapeau – alto, love practitioner
Mr. Leo Daedalus – tenor, media/art director, linguist
Ms. Anna Daedalus – soprano, art/media director
Samuel Miller – 16mm specialist
Jenny Fern Anderson – vestiary
John Berendzen – baritone, composer, director

Portland Premiere

Friday April 13 – Sunday April 15
Reed College, Eliot Hall

Friday April 20 – Sunday April 22
Pacific Northwest College of Art, rm 314

Friday April 27 – Sunday April 29
Chapman Elementary School auditorium

Friday and Saturday at 8pm and 10pm
Sunday at 8pm

$8-15, pay-what-you-can
Limited seating

For reservations, detailed directions and more info:
503 890 2993
liminal[at]liminalgroup.org
www.Liminalgroup.org

Liminal is a nonprofit Portland-based ensemble of artists producing performance and media works. Now celebrating its 10th year anniversary, Liminal has produced more than 12 original projects, winning numerous Portland Critics’ Circle (Drammy) awards for its productions of The Seven Deadly Sins, Three Plays Five Lives, The Resurrectory, and others.

The Theory of Love is funded with support from RACC, The Kinsman Foundation, and individual donors. Sponsored by Willamette Week, Reed College Theatre Department, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

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