Recursive Decay

Admittedly Recursive Decay is a strange title to give to a play, as the name conjures the presence of mathematics and biology. It sounds more like a slow acting disease than a title for a play. But this play was about the slow deterioration of a family caused by the repetitive actions of its members. We are all trapped, in some way, by small acts of repetition. Little actions that we believe we can control when we start, such as the lighting of a cigarette, but that eventually become so powerful that they control us even when we decide not to perform them.

With a stage divided into two performing spaces where the same story plays out for two different audiences, the simple idea that everything we do or have ever done is in some way a repetition was explored in all areas of the show’s design. Both audiences were getting a story about siblings who try to stop re-enacting the toxic relationship of their childhood, and both audiences watched as these siblings failed to divert the course that has been laid out for them. This undergraduate thesis project was produced and performed by a group of talented theatre students from the Department of Drama and Speech Communication as part of their ongoing studies.