Shuffle

 
Shuffle is an entirely new kind of ERS performance, one with constantly re-generated text and a dream-like logic. Through this collaboration with installation artist Ben Rubin and UCLA statistician Mark Hansen, the company looks back on its last three pieces through the lens of creative data analysis. The result is a site-specific mash-up where the company attempts to read The Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury and The Sun Also Rises simultaneously. The rearranged and overlapping texts produce compelling visual displays designed by Rubin and surprising, often absurd, micro-theater featuring many veteran ERS performers. Audience is encouraged to wander among the performers as they improvise. With scripts generated in real time by digital algorithms, phrases from the iconic novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway merge to create a look back at some of America’s favorite texts that is at once disorienting and enlightening.
 
Shuffle was commissioned by FuturePerfect, a new initiative that researches and presents emerging hybrid performance practices, media forms, and artistic ideas, and by The New York Public Library on the occasion of its Centennial.