PMURT

Vooruit Arts Center. Gent, Belgium. May 23, 2017​. *world premiere*

Dixon Place. New York, NY. May 11, 2018. *US premiere*

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Kevin Doyle -- writer, performer, film/audio design, and editor.

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Like a sports reporter after a football match, Kevin Doyle dissects the rhetorics of Donald Trump to reveal deeper undercurrents in American public discourse. PMURT combines solo performance with appropriated video to explore parallels between media consolidation and the compression of language. Drawing upon precedents in American politics, Doyle traces the dumbing down of public information and a dwindling tolerance for complex issues. Doyle carefully followed the modes of communication employed by Donald Trump, his supporters as well as his critics. Via his theatre work, Doyle has been exploring a transformation of language into more and more constrained structures for several years. He writes: “Any ideas that cannot fit within these terse systems, patterns or rhythms are not expressed and cannot be vocalized.“ Is there a connection between Trump’s success and the increasing compression of language?

 

PMURT is based upon and derived from Doyle’s August 2016 essay, which accurately predicted how and why Donald Trump would win the 2016 Presidential Election. The essay, ignored and dismissed by the New York arts circles, was finally published in October 2016 by Diggit Magazine in The Netherlands. PMURT was commissioned by the Vooruit Arts Center (Gent) and premiered in May 2017 to coincide with President Trump’s first visit to Belgium. It was presented the following year at Dixon Place in New York during May 2018.

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For further reading, the original 2016 essay -- "PMURT | TRUMP (or the blizzard of the world)"

https://www.diggitmagazine.com/working-papers/pmurt-trump

Performance photo credits: Arno Van Lierberghe.

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 US Copyright #PAu 4-080-780.