therapy as performance

It’s performance artist Leeny Sack’s new interdisciplinary performance experiment. Live therapy. Unscripted. Live video. No Fourth Wall.

On Friday, January 19th at 7pm, two (actual) public therapy sessions will be presented consecutively, conducted by Guest Therapists Kate Halliday and Jeff Collins, with Leeny Sack as the Constant Client. Experimental video artist Rachel Ferro will live-compose and live-project hyper close-ups of both the client and the therapists throughout. Dr. Sara Warner will speak and lead the post-event discussion. Moose, Leeny’s ESA, will appear as Himself. The (acknowledged) presence of the audience will itself generate content and meaning. The idea is to witness multiple sessions and experience how a Self constructs and deconstructs in the presence of different therapists and audiences.

“… the tension between the public and private. How far do you go?”
– Dr. James Hillman, Archetypal Psychologist

Therapy As Performance continues Leeny Sack’s three-decade work in Performance As Medicine and autobiographically-derived performance. It is the first of a series. Future iterations will include Embodied Dreamwork as Performance, Astrology as Performance, Hypnotherapy as Performance, Genetics as Performance, and Preparing to Die as Performance. Stay tuned.

Therapy As Performance from Floralia Films on Vimeo.

About Leeny Sack:

Leeny Sack is an interdisciplinary performance artist, founder and teacher of The Performative Self™, and certified Master Teacher of Kinetic Awareness®. She is a former member of The Performance Group, the renowned experimental theater company founded by Richard Schechner, and has performed with Spalding Gray, Elizabeth LeCompte, Ron Vawter, Joan MacIntosh, Eiko & Koma, among others. She was founding faculty in NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing, longtime guest artist in Naropa University’s MFA program in Contemporary Performance, and co-founder and artistic director of Pangea Farm Retreat Center. Leeny Sack has performed throughout the U.S., Europe and in Asia at venues including the Venice Biennale, The Edinburgh Festival, The American Dance Festival, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She currently lives and works in Ithaca, NY.  

“Leeny Sack is one of America’s outstanding practitioners of personal theatre.”
– Pooh Kaye, Artistic Director, Eccentric Motions, Inc.

The first installment of Therapy as Performance will take place at the Cherry Artspace on Friday, January 19th at 7pm. Seating is limited. Buy your tickets now.