Output details

Kill the Workers!

Kill the Workers is a 22-minute play for stage lights, using a rig of 36 lanterns fixed onto seven floor-based stands that illuminate a shifting square of light on the floor. Dramatic tension and plot progression are executed solely through changes in light intensity, timing, colour and direction. While Kill the Workers employs the conventions and mechanics of theatrical lighting and takes its cue from dramatic narrative, it is freed from the structure from which it is derived. It is written in the tradition of a mythic Odyssey, yet experienced as a composition of shifting light.

Kill the Workers was commissioned by Chisenhale Gallery, London. A period of research into the history of theatrical lighting was followed by the writing of a script/lighting cue sheet. The play stages a struggle between the real and the symbolic in which a single spotlight becomes the key protagonist on a journey to be seen as light alone. I worked in collaboration with a lighting technician to execute and programme the final piece.

Kill the Workers extends my interest in the language of theatre, dramatic narrative and the limits of the visual. It has been shown in the following solo exhibitions: ‘Kill the Workers’, Chisenhale Gallery (2011); ‘Janice Kerbel’, Badischer Kunstverein (2011); ‘Kill the Workers’, Walter Phillips Gallery (2012). It was included in ‘Conjuring for Beginners’, Project Art Centre, Dublin (2012).

The script of Kill the Workers will be published in JANICE KERBEL: COLLECTED SCRIPTS (JM Barnicke, University of Toronto, 2014). Kill the Workers was supported by the Henry Moore Foundation and Canada Arts Trust. Shortly after completing Kill the Workers, I was awarded a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists for the continued development of my practice.