This project is a multidisciplinary performance that reimagines T.S. Eliot’s modernist masterpiece as a theatrical ritual of fragmentation, chaos, and transformation. Combining live performance with a fully realized visual art installation, this immersive work explores themes of spiritual desolation, cultural decay, and the struggle for meaning in a fractured world.
The project’s visual art component plays a central role, with found-object sculptures, intricate masks, and mixed-media set pieces serving as both performance tools and standalone works. These pieces create a haunting, layered experience that extends beyond the stage, blurring the line between theater and gallery space. Lighting design and projection elements further shape the atmosphere, immersing audiences in a shifting landscape of ruin and renewal.
Staged as a dynamic solo performance, The Wasteland: A Ritual in Five Acts fuses movement, voice, and visual elements to bring Eliot’s poem to life. The piece unfolds across five distinct sections, each shifting through characters, tones, and textures to embody the collapse and potential rebirth at the heart of the work. A rich soundscape of audio collages, ambient noise, and live vocal elements add to the experience.
Following its debut at the 2025 Montreal Fringe Festival, the project will extend into a visual art exhibition showcasing the performance’s props, sets, and concept-driven sculptural works. An online radio-play style adaptation will further expand its reach, offering an auditory experience of the piece’s haunting, ritualistic intensity.
More than just a performance, The Wasteland: A Ritual in Five Acts is a raw, immersive confrontation with our contemporary moment—an exploration of what it means to seek renewal amid a collapsing society.