Work as Walkabout
From 2014-2022 I worked as an artistic director of the Walkabout Theater ensemble based in Chicago. Among other projects during that time I directed the co-creation of three indoor touring performances: The Wild, The Brink!, and The Raveling. We presented each of these pieces at multiple venues across the city of Chicago, as well as tours of The Wild and The Brink! in the US and abroad. Through this work I developed with the ensemble/creative teams a complex aesthetic and multilayered dramaturgical approach. Each performance dealt with what have become major themes in my work––confronting the fragmentation of the past, disentangling the unconscious hold of crumbling institutions on one’s self and psyche, and picking up pieces from the disarray to make meaning now. Learn more about the company’s current work and transformation here.
The Raveling (2018-2019)
“The play cascades in a flurry of memories, strung together and displayed like clothes pins on a line of old twine. Personal histories are shaped by their narrator with an undercurrent of the struggle to deal with the past in the present. This exploration unwinds what it means to have a family, roots and purpose […] through gripping forces of ensnaring music, unflinching nostalgia and fanciful footwork.”
— the Chicago Theatre Triathlon review
“…a colorful and accomplished 60 minutes of physical and aural impressions, ever changing like a kaleidoscope, and encompassing the cycle of life.”
— The Windy City Times
“From moment to moment, different resonances and connections are highlighted, in more ways that can be consciously processed [...] but I am left with a feeling, impression, in some way changed. This is also the feeling of being enraptured by a great piece of instrumental music. No one phrase can necessarily be used to demonstrate what the piece does, and in total, this is not the point of a great piece of music. It is what happens to all those components along the way that truly demonstrates the artistry. In The Raveling, Walkabout demonstrates that they are the masters of the musical development of the bits that make up a theatrical narrative.”
— Ryan Ingebritsen, musician
The Brink! or Nobody’s Ever Kissed Me Like That (2017-2018)
“The Brink makes fierce poetic sense of love, loss, and media. The physicality of the thing is gorgeous and exhilarating.”
–– The Chicago Reader
“This show looks like performance art and sounds like a musical. Walkabout seals it together with a satisfying kiss. […] A total original.”
–– The Fourth Walsh Review
“The show takes the familiar and warps it into the fantastic: […] A surrealism unlike anything I have seen before. […] The works of Gertrude Stein and Anne Carson create vignettes between songs that provide powerful context to the imagery created by the cast. […] The themes of femininity, love, and sexuality are apparent; however, you will be creating your own stories and messages from the performance.”
— the Hawk Chicago
The Wild (2014-2016)
“It is a wild ride, indeed, and one that heeds the siren call of rich visuals and incantatory ritual and high-octane movement. […] The palpable suggestion is that, while, we may no longer gather in the woods to celebrate Dionysian ritual, if you get enough of us together in one place, we can still find ways to destroy those we deem “other” […]. We have met the Maenads, and they are us.”
— Chicago Tribune
“The Wild is a daring, stunningly surreal ritualistic feast of dance, drama, music, wrestling, acrobatics and costuming magic […] directed with extraordinary originality and heat by Thom Pasculli […]. More dance-theater than play, “The Wild” is part Martha Graham and Pina Bausch, part Fillini and Guillermo del Toro, and altogether brilliant it is mix of primal drives and rational restraints.”
— Chicago Sun Times
