both:and:between

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Abstract

Working with Lorraine O’Grady’s dismissal of the binary in her subjectivity, my play titled both:and:between retraces the structuralist idea of the binary opposition in the presence-absence dichotomy. In Western thought presence implies a dominant position over absence, because it is considered as a by-product of presence. In other words, absence only exists in lack of presence. In a society where one end of the binary governs the other, what then becomes of liminal existence?

In both:and:between, the main character subject exists outside of the life and death binary and is suspended in a permanent state of liminality. While in fixed liminality, subject is seduced into being integrated into “life” by Agent V, a voice that subject hears as coming from their palms. At the same time Agent Dheu, a voice coming from their soles, maintains that subject should be integrated into “death”.  subject views liminality as a holistic healing of the psyche and is  tormented by the agents’ aggressive influences. In its strange format,  both:and:between questions “how do we measure the spatial and temporal dimensions of liminality” and plays with hints of Jungian notions of self-realization in a liminal space.