Performed at The Playwrights’ Center, Minneapolis
Predator-Prey, and dance and physical theatre performance, follows the parallel lives of two women colliding through a veil in time surrounded by a total winter installation of ice and snow. Predator-Prey takes you to the heart of a northern Midwest winter where every breath hangs in the air like a mystery, and where life and death are forever in balance. With a fierce physicality, the anxious, disconnected lives of two women - one in the present in an urban world, the other in the past at the edge of the Great Plains - meet here in a dramatic collision across time and space.
Credits
Created and Developed by Jennifer Ilse and Paul HerwigProject Initiator – Jennifer Ilse
Choreography by Jennifer Ilse
Scenic Design, Masks and Props by Paul Herwig
Sound Design by Reid Kruger
Lighting Design by Paul Epton
Text by Marcie Rendon
Cast – 9, Keisha Richburg, Jerome Barnes, John Carl Heimbuch, Jim Lieberthal, Virginia Krubsak, Jaime Kleiman, Amber Ellison, Jennifer Ilse, Paul Herwig
Duration - 85 min
Reviews
City Pages Review"Jennifer Ilse and Paul Herwig's ever-inventive Off-Leash Area, formerly the Theater Gallery, unleashes the most ambitious piece yet with Predator-Prey, a strange mix of dance, theater, Native American mythology, and elliptical social commentary. Created in collaboration with Anishinaabe playwright Marcie Rendon, the show is set in an icy Midwestern winter and follows the lives of two unnamed characters, a contemporary businesswoman, and a "Woman in the Natural World" from the distant Great Plains. The audience sits on pillows and is periodically directed to move to different spots in the theater, providing different perspectives on Herwig's gray and ghostly set/installation piece... Predator-Prey is also captivatingly mysterious, and Ilse's dancing is outstanding throughout, especially an anxious, choppy response to a stalled car and to the whole working-world treadmill.
- Dylan Hicks, CITY PAGES A-Listing, February 25th, 2004
StarTribune Review
"The audience sits in a bleak midwinter environment. A trio of shape-shifting spirits chants the tale as three crows watch over two women in conflict. One, Woman in an Urban World, battles against the mechanized speed of contemporary society. The other, Woman in the Natural World, struggles simply to survive in a primitive, prehistoric realm... The work succeeds mostly as an art installation. The seats have been removed from the space, and the audience sits amid ponds of glass shards and prairie grasses. Designer Herwig has created striking urban and forest landscapes of black, white and gray that cover the walls. With the dense and austere aural design by Reid Kruger, it's an evocative environment to support the movement... The parallel stories come together in juxtaposed solos for the two women. Ilse, as the urban woman, and Amber Ellison, as the natural one, have something meaningful to dance, and they execute it with real passion. The climax is a moment of compelling theater."
- William Randolph Beard, STAR TRIBUNE, February 26, 2004