In My Heart's Eye: The Love Project

IN MY HEART’S EYE: THE LOVE PROJECT 
A performance by Zoukak Theatre Company

“[Love] is an existential project: to construct a world from a decentered point of view, other than that of my mere impulse to survive or re-affirm my own identity.”

Alain Badiou – In Praise Of Love

Love, like theatre, takes place in the “here” and “now” and drives individuals to transform the irrevocability of their past and the projections of their future into infinite possibilities in the present. Society posits the certainty of death at the core of any truth, as a fatality looming in the horizon and defining human action; framing “the end of the story”. But what if we were to study “the middle of the story”… the apex of the adventure of life, through instances of falling in love? How does this impact our reading of the world we live in, how many ends and beginnings can we envision other than birth and death?

The Love Project studies a succession of ephemeral moments that have defined people’s various journeys. Our research is based on in-depth interviews with people from different walks of life; who shared their real love stories, intimate encounters and reflections on love as a concept and practice. Some of them have been through difficult circumstances, others encountered love in unexpected places, and all of them assessed how love affected their paths and their views of the world.

The performance involves the audience in a series of tableaux that encapsulate various love encounters. Playing with the mechanisms of attraction, infatuation, daydreaming and loss as a process of endless re-enactments and a way to see through the Other.