Djinn

An environmental performance piece based on Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel.

“In Appino and Corson’s Djinn you’ll discover why Aristotle included Spectacle as one of the six essentials of the theatrical experience. With a shoestring budget and a superabundant imagination they transform a structure built for utilitarian ends into a gigantic cabinet of wonders, resonating with the poetic impact of sheer space, the dialectic of light and shadow.” - Roger Downey, Seattle Weekly

Project Description

Djinn premiered at the newly decommissioned Sandpoint Naval Base in Seattle Washington. An environmental performance piece based on Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel, it told the story of a young woman who joins a clandestine organization under the command of an alluring androgynous American girl named Djinn. Having agreed to wear dark glasses and carry a cane like a blind man, she comes to realize through bizarre encounters, recurring visual images and fractured time sequences that she is truly blind. Her search for the meaning of her mission and for possible clues to the identity of the mysterious Djinn, echoes her own quest for identity in an ever-shifting landscape of flesh and fiction.

Audience members met in downtown Seattle where they boarded busses with blacked out windows that carried them to and undisclosed location. They were treated as members of a crime team attempting to solve a mystery. They followed a path through streets, cafes and furnished rooms of a Paris mysteriously emptied of people. They learn that Djinn may be dead, or perhaps never existed: unless it is our hero who is dead, or dreaming, or foreseeing events that may occur in the future . . .