EXIT LEFT (2020)
written and directed by susannah yugler
sound score & visuals by lawn mall
performed by charlie chidiac, owen prum, and alexa west
vocal performance by alex chapin, lauren glading, lawn mall, and susannah yugler






In April 2020, I began writing a play under New York’s first shelter-in-place order. I was inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist play “No Exit” (1944) as a premise for purgatorial claustrophobia and enclosure. The resulting project re-contextualizes the characters in a liminal space between the near future and present day. In addition to Sartre’s original play, Donna Haraway’s definition of cyborgian realism and her phrase “electronic cottage” (A Cyborg Manifesto 1984) situates the landscape. In this work, the scripted dialogue is pre-recorded, as the bodies attempt to catch up to it, moving in and out of syncopation and delay –– much like a video call. The three dancers wear masks akin to their actual faces –– in which the dancers become simulations of themselves and someone else, and the distinction becomes ambiguous.