Mike Kelley: Day is Done January 22, 2007

MIKE KELLEY: DAY IS DONE
(EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY PROJECTIVE RECONSTRUCTIONS #2–#32)

World theatrical premiere | 2005–06, 150 min., DigiBeta

"Day Is Done is an indisputable tour de force... a variety show scripted by a regression therapist." The Village Voice

A major new video work by the Los Angeles artist, Day Is Done is a feature-length musical that examines American subcultures and folk events through the restaging of 31 carnivalesque productions intermixed into a meandering semi-narrative. Each reconstruction is a live-action scene that has been extrapolated from photographs found in high school yearbooks, with such familiar diversions from the day-to-day routine as dress-up days, memorial speeches, religious spectacles, fashion shows, singles’ mixers and musical follies. Kelley disrupts the traditional structures of such events to construct a dizzying daisy chain of performances that results in an institutional landscape populated by dancing Goths, singing vampires, hick storytellers, horse dancers and the Virgin Mary. Written and directed by Mike Kelley, with original music by Mike Kelley and Scott Benzel, and choreography by Kate Foley.

Official Website: http://redcat.org/season/0607/fv/kelley.php