Ungrateful Buisness
Barbara Wren, Daniel Pervuhin, Amy Claire Mills, Phanos Proestos, George Sandman Popov14-25 April 2015 Opening Night Tuesday 14 April 2015, 5-7pm
Go with me to a notary, seal me there Your single bond; and, in a merry sport, If you repay me not on such a day, In such a place, such sum or sums as are Express'd in the condition, let the forfeit Be nominated for an equal pound Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken In what part of your body pleaseth me.
The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare (1.3.17)
Ungrateful Business invites the audience to enter into an awareness provoking dialogue regarding the nature of the 'gift economy' and explore their own perception of giving and receiving. Although the generally accepted definition of a 'gift' is "something voluntarily given by one person to another without payment or compensation", far too often the unspoken reality embedded in the giving of gifts, favours or loans is sacrifice for advantage and the alleged 'gift' is used as a tool to elicit a social, economic or emotional advantage by evoking a response of indebtedness in the recipient. These disguised contracts are usually negotiated in the absence of words and can be obvious, obscured or implied and payment can take any form...time, guilt, control, expectations or obligations.
Ungrateful Business, while shining some light onto the dark side of gifts and their hidden costs and agendas and our own complicity in these less than honest transactions, also explores utopian ideals of giving where no one loses and everyone gains... where being a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing others in the name of giving is seen as attack, not love. Perhaps if we could accept this idea our fear of love would vanish.
