Local Performance: 'The Theory of Love'

Weekend!Arts

The Portland Tribune, Apr 13, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

©2007 TOMEK KARWOWSKI

The performance-art troupe that explored 19th-century crime not too long ago now moves to the lighter side, examining romantic discourse from love letters to songs in a multimedia lecture-opera format.

Liminal is back and ready for love. In theory, anyway.

The thought-provoking performance group (remember the “re-enacted” 19th-century murders of “The Resurrectory” in 2005?) presents “The Theory of Love” at three different school-like venues over the next 17 days.

Liminal bills it as a “traveling multimedia lecture-opera.”

The fake lecture format is a favorite in Portland art circles since it combines ironic distance and real pedagogy. “The Theory of Love” ups the ante when it uses two lecturers in front of video screens plus original music from longtime Liminal composer John Berendzen.

“The drama is the social drama; it’s not referring to anything outside of itself,” Berendzen says. “There’s no fourth wall — the singers are portraying themselves.”

In this sense it’s like performance art, where the viewer is asked to suspend whole belief systems. Audience members will sit at wooden desks and receive notepads.

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