Spring, 2006
The Labo(u)r Project
by Aaron Henne
Son of Semele Ensemble's The Labor Project is a company created project that will seek to depict a "coming to consciousness" about working life, based on research into history - writings, music, poems, etc. - and each actor's imagination, attitudes and life experiences.
We are what we do...when we do it.
From the end of the French Revolution up to World War I, the rise of massive industrialization - first and foremost in England, "the workshop of the world," - led to the development of a new kind of human who toiled by the clock like a cog in a giant machine. Slowly, these new work-defined beingsconnected to others and together, they struggled to win back their humanity. Some attacked the machines.
Others organized unions and political parties. Yet in 1914, after a century of evolving "class consciousness," the workers betrayed one another. Rather than unite, the "workers of the world" marched to war.
The Labor Project uses the history of the English working class to make a crystal clear window for us to view our own working lives. Today, we work hard, struggle to form communities, lament our lack of economic autonomy, and curse our soul's isolation in a materialistic culture.
Appearing as Chaplin-esque vagabonds, workers dance, pratfall, tumble and roll through more than a century of evolving consciousness in a sometimes absurd attempt to make a mark ... or perhaps just a smile.
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