Photo shoot this weekend! I love directing a photo shoot, boy howdy. Mainly because I wish I could take actually good photos – so instead I point my friend Matt’s actual talent at what I’m vaguely gesticulating towards. An image can be a perfect expression of an idea – or maybe several – evoking an entire world of feeling, frozen in a moment. Or if nothing else, just looking rad as hell. People often forget that the majority of the purpose of art is just to rule.

We’ll be shooting in my beloved’s theater at UGA Dance Department, so of course I’m simply salivating about being to have some real goddamn negative space to play with. BIG EMPTY pleases this little peapod brain of mine – and it is especially satisfying as an environment to consider the character of Antigone. So much of the script focuses on her isolation – on being separate and cut-off – by bloodline, by destiny – almost to the point of treating her as non-human. I enjoy the ambivalence. The script has a bent towards deifying her – but also so many images of the unnatural, bordering on paranormal.

You come from a people for whom the human vestment is a kind of straitjacket: it cracks at the seams. You spend your lives wriggling to get out of it. Nothing less than a cosy tea party with death and destiny will quench your thirst. / CREON

The overtly theatrical tone of the play also lends itself to this – the image of her being pushed on stage to play a part. A role that she chooses, but also is desperate to deny. Deny what it means to be Oedipus’ daughter, to be Jocasta’s daughter, to be Antigone. A whole section of the photo shoot is putting an Oedipus mask, complete with bloody tears, on our model – in wide, in closeup.

I have a pack of extra masks, maybe throw some on whatever bodies I have to put in the background, out of focus – looming, judging, demanding. Weird photos are the best, boy howdy.

Sometimes I think I should just do weird photo shoots and skip the attached play, podcast, other media, etc.