Sayonara Diorama
Video documentation, script, costumes, robots, website
1998Sayonara Diorama is an electronic multimedia performance and original play with robots, live actors, video and remote participants. The play tells the story of Darwin’s fictive second voyage of the Beagle, 40 years after the first. During this Voyage, Captain Fitzroy and Darwin engage in a fight about organized religion which is so fierce, it results in a violent storm and the Beagle is shipwrecked. Captain Fitzroy is dispatched to an island called Heaven. Darwin is left stranded on another island with inexplicable creatures, a tribe of robots, that perpetually roam the island in search of what to search for, and the monstrous races. A discussion of who has the best evolutionary adaptations ensues. Sayonara Diorama was performed at The Lovinger Theater, Lehman College, NY, May 28 and April 4, 1998. Funded by the Electronic Media and Film Program of The New York State Council on The Arts via Lehman College Art Gallery.
Photos by Jose A. Betancourt