Quiet Little Monsters

A Performance Art Piece by Sibylle Gorla, in collaboration with Project Flux Dance and WEND

Quiet Little Monsters is a performance art piece dedicated to exploring the chaos and torment of the thoughts in our heads. What is astounding about our thoughts is that they are just that, our thoughts, one could easily control them with a switch of the mind, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Have you ever experienced a moment where you spiraled, lost control, and felt ultimately hopeless at controlling the thoughts you were having? This piece is for you. 

Let me set the scene for you… 

It is dark. Sage and Palo Santo are burned throughout the entire space. 

Lights come on. You are looking at a stage with a door in the middle. On one side of the door is a living room with a couch, a lamp, books, magazines, and other usual living room items. This living room side is lit up, there is light. On the other side of the door there isn’t much, maybe a couple empty cardboard boxes, rocks, no parking signs. It’s not much to talk about and that side is very dark, shadowy. 

There is one person dressed in white on the living room side, reading a book. It is The Person. On the other side of the door there are figures dressed in dark colors. They are The Thoughts. They are agitated, pent up. They cannot sit still. They are like little goblins, hyenas. All over the place. Frantic. 

The Thoughts finally cannot take it anymore and they start to push against the door, they want to open it up. The Person is disturbed from their reading and goes to the door, pushing against it, trying to keep The Thoughts from coming in. They are pushing. The Person is pushing, they are all pushing. It feels like a tug of war. At times it feels like The Person might beat Them and keep the door shut, while at other times it looks like The Thoughts are going to take over. This goes on for a while, the back and forth. 

Finally, The Thoughts take over. They open the door and they crawl storm stomp hop into the side of the stage where The Person is. They pull Its hair bite Its legs pull on Its arms, climb on It punch It all while The Person is suffocating from the torment. The torture. 

Somehow The Person manages to escape and it runs through the door to the other side and shut the door. The tug of war resumes, where The Thoughts try to come in and The Person tries to keep them out, until The Thoughts win again. This time The Thoughts are a little more cruel, cutting The Person’s hair, slapping it, throwing black paint on it. The Person fights back but is now so weak all they can do is scream. At first the scream is very weak, but then The Person tries again and it gets louder and louder until it is so loud you cannot hear The Thoughts, who are making their creepy hyena noises. Finally The Person lets out one last big scream and all of the thoughts fall on the floor. The Person drags itself back to the other side of the stage, crumpling on the couch. Scene ends. More Sage and Palo Santo burn as people leave.