Rachel Bernsen

Many of my projects are investigations in collaboration and improvisation. Novel Formats #1-7 is a multi-year performance work in seven installments, each prompted by the desire to rethink the understanding of and experience with improvisation as a form of performance and explore the boundaries between real time decision making and overt theatricality. Each installment asks the question: what happens when we come together in different social configurations, each with its own possibilities for improvisation and contact? Improvisation asks us to notice what we’re doing in the moment, to question learned and internalized value systems. We think our senses are right and true but so much is learned, habitual. Novel Formats aims to interrupt these patterns through novelty, risk, and real time human connection. Each installment will have a different cast of collaborators from the fields of dance, music, visual art, theater, performance art, the written word.