The Medium is the Message.

METAMORPHOSES takes a bold step forward by taking an epic leap backward on the tightrope of time. Performer Todd Conner brings to audiences, courtesy of the Roman poet Ovid, that obscured First Medium, the source of all the others: the Original -- the one that started it all -- the Mother of all media, the great, great, Granddaddy of them all ... him.  Well, no...  Not him exactly.  Rather, You.  Or better yet:  Us.

OurSelves.

The Human Being.   Remember that one?

In our hyper-mediated culture, the human being is a medium demanding serious re-evaluation. Todd Conner's METAMORPHOSES is an integrated set of mythic "cover-tunes," if you will, downloaded from Antiquity via a solitary human modem and as close to flesh-and-bone as possible. Conceiving, translating and adapting episodes from Ovid's masterpiece, METAMORPHOSES, Conner mediates an astonishing solo performance, which doesn't just bring audiences close to the fire-wall separating fantasy from reality; Conner's storytelling is a Trojan Horse that imports Ovid's hallucinogenic images through the usually barred gates of the modern imagination, promising to hold yours captive for 90 minutes. And in the course of this night-time raid of your attention, you will discover that this ancient poetry isn't ancient at all: it's happening NOW, right in front of you, all around you, and indeed, even inside of you. This evening is about Change: brutal, ecstatic, unrelenting, but ultimately liberating.

Notes on Mayasphere from the program of the Metamorphoses  premiere October 5, 2000


The Sanskrit word māyā is the foundation of our English words imagination, magic, amaze, mystery, among others.  The term speaks to something very deep, powerful, and yet very very simple, in our perceptions.  In some contexts, it has even been translated as “nature”--or more completely put--nature as reflected via the mirror of our perceptions.  “The end of playing,” Hamlet says, “is to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature.”  That is all I hope to do here tonight--and at near to point-blank range--creating a sphere of māyā.  Regardless of expensive production values, bells and whistles, turntables, laser-shows, holograms, computer-generated imagery, if the “technology” of māyā is not invoked somewhere in the middle of the electronic stew, what’s left is mere industry, where mirrors reflects mirrors reflect mirrors reflect mirrors reflect...  What is essential, what makes theatre a humanity, is a self-consistent and contained, rigorously disciplined sphere of māyā.


And this, really, is the most special effect of all--simply because it originates in you.