Primer/Lem was an original puppet, object, and multimedia performance piece created by Matt Acheson, Jeff Burke, Tom Lee, Jonathan Snipes, and Jared J. Stein. The team received funding from The Trust for Mutual Understanding to build the piece while collaborating with puppeteers from Theatredreams Sofia and the State Puppet Theatre of Varna at the 2009 Rhodope International Theatre Laboratory in Bulgaria.
The work of the great Polish writer Stanislaw Lem anticipated the way technology would impact humanity. His ruminations on themes such as technology’s relationship with humanity, the nature of intelligence, and existential isolation provided a fertile ground for mixed media conventions and theatrical forms. Primer/Lem utilized his body of work as a narrative guide (in particular, the themes of Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Solaris, and Return from the Stars) and both Eastern and Western theatre techniques, in honor of a man who saw past political divisions and geographical boundaries, to contemplate the truly alien, and by extension, the truly human.
Rhodope International Theater Laboratory—2009.
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