Code-A-Cell

For me, the Holy Grail of group performance poetry has been to create a show as tight and innovative as the Chicago Poetry Ensemble’s “Animal Songs.” Code-A-Cell held the grail. The Human Genome Project was nearing completion (2002) and the prompt was to weave a show around the ideas of code, reproduction, and animation. May Hall and Trudy Lewis’ collaborative story was eventually published as were their two individual stories. I developed the polyvocal technique “genophonics” for the show which I’ve used ever since as a way to weave together four voices. The whole experience was a joy from genotype to phenotype.

Mike Barrett, May Hall, Trudy Lewis, and Seido Ray Ronci were the players. The show started with the digital animation of “Antraps.” The animation ended with the outro below which began the live action.