In conversation with Ira Brand about Commitment Phobe

Know where you stand, know what you want, take a position. But what if you're just not sure? 

With Commitment Phobe, international theater maker Ira Brand presents a physical exploration of doubt in a world that values certainty. The performance premieres on Thursday April 20th at Frascati. We spoke to Ira about her upcoming work and creating a performance as a 'person of doubt'. 

Hi Ira, what was your personal drive to create a work about doubt? 

I (only part jokingly) describe myself as a ‘person of doubt’, by which I mean that I am someone who is often questioning, unsure, struggling to arrive at a certain or definitive position on things. I recognise this as a personal trait, but also a thing that is deeply relational – it is fuelled by interaction with other people. And it’s social and political – we live in a society that mostly teaches us that it is valuable to be decisive, sure, strong and clear in our opinions, and so on. 

My experience is that people often look at doubt or uncertainty as a problem, even abject. So I wanted to make a show to explore and understand this tension in different ways, and to think about how we might try and be more comfortable in states of doubt and not knowing. 

Also the title, Commitment Phobe, is a bit of a joke – am I celebrating doubt, or am I just afraid to commit?

How will you translate these conceptual ideas around doubt into a physical performance? 

I had from the very beginning an instinct that I wanted the performers (Tiana Hemlock-Yensen and myself) to be building something in the show. I always like watching people ‘work’ on stage, and I was interested in this effort as a representation of the internal struggle of doubting and trying to arrive at sureness. 

So I was thinking for a long time about different things we could be constructing, and at some point this idea arrived for a kind of chain-reaction machine. It made sense because it relies on a lot of certainty and decisiveness in order to make something that ‘works’ but in the end it also is inherently unpredictable and uncertain.

What other artists have inspired you?

I was very inspired by a book called Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again by Katherine Angel, which is about desire in the context of consent culture. She’s writing specifically about negotiating sexual relationships, but it’s also more generally about the idea of having to always know and assert who we are and what we want. 

Another important reference was Maggie Nelson’s The Art of Cruelty, which is a book about cruelty and violence in art, and very much about the pleasure (and necessity!) of artworks – and other experiences – that are ambiguous, and resist easy resolution or definition.

In 2020, you did a research project for Fraslab which was also called Commitment Phobe. How has your work for Fraslab developed into the performance Commitment Phobe?

In 2020 I was working with a live collaging practice, and the sharing I did for Fraslab ended with me trying to take apart all of the furniture and elements of the stage with the idea to then build something new with them.

The collaging and this idea of deconstructing and rebuilding the structures around us developed into another piece of work that I premiered last year, like the party has been cancelled. So the collaging itself is no longer in this show, but the gesture of building, and of reusing materials, is really still there in the machine.

What have you learnt from the process so far? 

What I have learnt is that at every step in creating this work, I have to dig past the binary ways of thinking that are so deeply ingrained in me, and in our culture. Even when I talk, or write, about the ideas in this work I notice that I get stuck in a game of oppositions. 

There is me and there is the world. There is how you are and there is how I am. I have had to learn to get past the idea of something being either ‘precise’ or ‘ambiguous’, ‘certain’ or ‘unsure’: for me it is always both. 

What would you like your audience to know before visiting Commitment Phobe?

Come see our show. It’s both a celebration and not a celebration.

Oh, and there’s a chain reaction machine in it. 

Next time I’m making a show about fish.

Following its international première and run in Frascati, Commitment Phobe will be performed in London (The Yard Theatre, NOW Festival) and Antwerp (Monty), among other places.

Credits

created and written by Ira Brand performed by Ira Brand and Tiana Hemlock-Yensen scenography and light design Paul Boereboom sound design Thomas van de Berg dramaturgy Marta Keil final direction Abigail Conway campaign image Lisa Schamlé co-production wpZimmer, C-Takt, Festival Cement, The Yard Theatre