DEATH RATTLE   

DEATH RATTLE is a live performance based on the play The Empire Builders, written by the

French existentialist playwright and jazz musician Boris Vian.

The original story follows a family, trapped indoors by a noise, and portrays their ensuing anguish and destruction.

This new piece tears that script apart and reassembles it with dialogue and text fabricated from local internet chatter – conversations, images, and video found on Nextdoor, Facebook, and Reddit – created by our Carlisle community.

This piece explores isolation and community, as well as how we treat each other and ourselves.

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The internet is always there.

Wherever you go, things look the same.      Repeated.

Wherever you go, things look the same.

Wherever you go,                  repeated.

Happy families are all alike,

Now unhappy families are too;

progress.                                                    Repeated.

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DEATH RATTLE employs an array of new and used technology and forms, a patchwork of sculpture and media, original live sound scores and compositions, and a contemporary punk poetic aesthetic informed by our local (counter)culture here in central Pennsylvania.