BAD THING (2010)
Nasty, poetic, and surprisingly funny, Bad Thing is an amalgamation of theater, installation, performance and painting. The piece circles around the body of American violence, exploring ideas of Western guilt and pleasure in a series of shifting scenarios that are often grotesquely humorous, sometimes tender, always distressingly familiar. This dark performance features six characters (a hallucinating conquistador, a brutally sadistic monk, a paranoid hidalgo, a grotesquely obsequious servant, and Jesus Christ in the guise of a fox, and six paintings that explore and complicate archetypal themes of dominance, submission, boredom, paranoia, and transcendence. Bad Thing takes inspiration from 17th century Spanish playwright Lope de Vega's story of a repentant sadistic noble La Fianza Satisfecha, the diaries of Spanish conquistador-turned-healer Cabeza de Vaca, and Eduardo Galeano's classic Open Veins of Latin America.