Derek Spencer - Spring 2022 Resident Fellow
Derek Spencer makes performances that distill complex philosophical ideas into salient emotional experiences. His work is typically devised with an ensemble, performed in unusual venues, and formatted with immersive and interactive elements.
Derek is the founder and artistic director of Ceaseless Fun, an LA-based immersive performance company operating since 2016. Select projects with Ceaseless Fun include: Everyone Agrees it’s about to Explode (2020), The Stars (2018), They Who Saw the Deep (2018), Agnosia (2018), and Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan (2017). Derek served as a board member for the League of Experiential and Immersive Artists from 2017-2021 and currently runs an intermittent ensemble devising jam called Soft Focus. In 2014 he received his B.A. in Philosophy and Public Policy from the University of Chicago.
While at PlySpace, Derek has been working with acting students from Ball State University’s Department of Theater and Dance to create a devised adaptation of The Eumenides by Aeschylus. FURY adapts the classic Greek tragedy The Eumenides for a contemporary context. Spencer and his ensemble of BSU acting students draw on physical theater, immersive performance techniques, and improvisation to examine the role of anger in judicial reform. As Athena gathers her jury for the first ever trial, the Furies, ancient gods of anger, eagerly await the execution of the matricidal Orestes. True justice, however, may be more complicated than a simple verdict.
Originally devised with the ensemble and performed in an ornate Masonic temple, Fury asks audiences to examine their own relationship to justice, reform, and authority.
Full List of Events:
Tuesday, April 5 - Artist Talk by Derek Spencer, 7:00 to 8:00pm
First Thursday, April 7 - Open Rehearsal with FURY Cast, 7:00 to 8:00pm
Thursday, April 21 - Sunday, April 24 - FURY Performances, 7:30 to 10:30pm
