Portland Tribune, May 5, 2005
by Joseph Gallivan
Portland’s best performance art group, Liminal, returns with a show that has been 16 months in the making. “Resurrectory” is based on the story of William Burke and William Hare, two Edinburgh (via Ireland) grave robbers who killed 18 innocent people to supply corpses to medical science in 1827 and 1828.
The space is divided into three worlds—the collections, the inquest, and the jars of ashes and live researchers writing at ancient desks. Visitors are welcome to poke around as though they are in a real, fake museum. Then, three evenings a week, the Liminal hard bodies will act out eight of the 18 murders, using stylized movements and barked directions from the Controller (Madeleine Sanford). She also does phrenology examinations on audience members.
A sloping stage has been built for the six actors to bounce around on, and stunningly beautiful video images (by Jim Blashfield) are projected onto a plaster cast of a corpse. Amanda Boekelheide, Liminal’s movement director for eight years, helped choreograph such gestures as how to lift a corpse and how to drown someone in a washtub. Liminal’s two main influences are the highly physical theater of Corporeal Mime and the Gardzienice Theater.
“We’re interested in nonlinear storytelling,” says Liminal co-founder Bryan Markovitz, 31, “and also duration and simultaneity.” They’re phrases one would normally run a mile from, but in this group’s hands, the big ideas don’t smother the moments of beauty and horror. “Resurrectory” will be an ongoing process, trying to construct an identity for some of the anonymous victims.
Tours in the unattended “Resurrectory” space are noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, free; tours during “Resurrectory” staff hours are 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday-Saturday; through June 18, $6-$10, 2045 S.E. Belmont St., 503-239-5481
Current News
News about Liminal Presents Gertrude Stein will Appear soon.
Features
Local Performance: ‘The Theory of Love’
Portland Tribune, April 13, 2007
Hand2Mouth and Liminal prove cheap theater doesn’t have to suck
Willamette Week, April 11, 2007
Resurrectory preview
Portland Tribune, May 5, 2005
Death, Drama, Deconstruction
Portland Mercury, May 4, 2005
Cult of the Liminal
Portland Mercury, April 17, 2003
Liminal Fills Its New Space With A Little Show
Willamette Week, Feb. 21, 2003
Liminal Puts a Modern Spin on Brecht/Weill
The Oregonian, August 23, 2002
The Seven Deadly Sins
Portland Mercury, August 29, 2002
The Seven Deadly Sins
Portland Tribune, August 30, 2002
Artbeat segment on Liminal
OPB, May 2001 [.mov]
Ad for the Artbeat segment on Liminal
OPB, May 2001
Where Text Meets Technology
The Oregonian, April 22, 2001
The New School
Willamette Week, Sept. 15, 1999
Letters to the Editor
Willamette Week, Nov. 11 & 18, 1998
Reviews
The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other
The Oregonian April 13, 2000
Articles by Liminal members
News releases and Galleries
High-resolution photos for The Theory of Love
Liminal Falls in Love, Exercises Left, Right Sides of Brain
February 23, 2007
Liminal stages Caryl Churchill’s play Far Away
December 16, 2005
Liminal’s Resurrectory Re-Commits, Investigates 100-Year-Old Murders
March 28, 2005
High-resolution photos of The Resurrectory
Bikes, Bands and Bacchanalia Oct. 21, 2003
Faust(Faust) August 13, 2003
Krapp’s Last Tape June 28, 2003
Three Plays, Five Lives April 1, 2003
FluXconcert PDX March 17, 2003
Minimal at Liminal February 4, 2003
The Seven Deadly Sins August 7, 2002
Objects for the Emancipated Consumer (in Vancouver, B.C.) Oct. 4, 2001
Objects for the Emancipated Consumer (in Portland) April 4, 2001
Objects for the Emancipated Consumer (in Seattle) Jan. 22, 2001
High-resolution photos of the ensemble
Thomas Leabhart workshop Dec. 3, 1999
Jowl Movements I-IX (3) Oct. 28, 1998
Jowl Movements I-IX (1) Oct. 8, 1998
Handke Salmagundi March 16, 1998
Symposium on the Avant-Garde in Portland March 16, 1998
Suicide in B-flat July 1997
