This the American premiere of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s play NARCISSE, a masterpiece which the legendary philosopher wrote at the age of 18 years old.

NARCISSE is an utterly contemporary drama that deals with issues of narcissism and sexual ambiguity. The play is about a man who falls in love with an image of himself dressed as a woman and explores desire, self-obsession, and relations between the sexes. 

This is the first collaboration of Eyeball Planet created in 2004 by director Anne Deneys-Tunney, member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab.  NARCISSE is a resolutely exploratory and experimental production which combines an 18th Century English translation of Rousseau’s play with contemporary music, modern dance and movement in order to express what Blanchot would call Rousseau’s extreme contemporaneity.

Anne Deneys-Tunney employs a new technique of performance which articulates body and language in order to achieve what she calls "automatic acting" or "dance with words." Explored are coincidental tendencies between body and words, space and desire, classical texts and avant-garde practices.

NARCISSE manifests Eyeball Planet’s aim to track new links between artistic media: music, dance, painting and drawing, video art, sound installation, and literature. Its goal is to play with and displace scenic conventions,  producing  a  multi-media  event  through  collaboration among various avant-garde artists.

Narcisse was written by Rousseau when he was18 and tells of two love stories, Narcisse/ Angélique, Lucinda/ Leander. One could say these two love stories are not truly articulated together. The second love story is left behind unexplored, undeveloped in the background. It is unquestionably one of Rousseaus's masterpieces, a stunneningly modern tale of the human psyche. The work we present is composed of different pieces: the actors (some have been with me for many years and are trained in my very specific technique, some have just joined and are therefore less familiar with  this technique), the music, the space: all of  these become the means for doing, or rather undoing theater through music and dance, as the constraints and conventions of theater are historically overcome and reappear there only to be jumped over. 
                                                                                                          Anne  Deneys-Tunney

Collaborating Artists For NARCISSE

Stephen Tunney        Painter/Set designer, Video Conceptualizer
Dogbowl      Composer Producer and Performer of original score for NARCISSE, Eyeball Planet 
Michael Shumacher      Composer of Room Piece for Part 1, Diapason Sound Gallery 
Nikos Floros      Costume Designer 
John Pemberton    Cameraman 
Stephane Crasneanscki     Sound Mix Part 1 Soundwalk
Kevin Hardy      Light Designer 
Simon Critchley     Voice of Rousseau in Part 1

Collaborating Actors For NARCISSE

The Portrait          Carolyn Tunney
Lucinda                Mary Kuhns
Martha                 Madeleine Pramik
Angelica               Marisa Stefatos
Narcisse               Michael Ritchie
Frontin                 Karen Santos Da Silva
Lisimon                Scott Sanders
Leander               Benjamin Binstock
Cameraman          John Pemberton

Assistants to the Director:  Scott Sanders, Karen Santos Da Silva
Stage Manager: Nikki Gold
Production Director:  Marisa Stefatos

This production was made possible with the generous support of New York University, The New School, Columbia University, Materials For The Arts, The Cultural Services of the French Embassy, and private contributors.