Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimensions

By Edwin A. Abbott

This dramatization of Edwin Abbott’s Victorian geometry text uses geometric shapes that slide along the floor in this imagined country of two dimensions, until the square meets a sphere and becomes acquainted with the third dimension. When he returns to his flat countrymen to tell them of his discovery, he is imprisoned for subversion and heresy; although previous conversations make it apparent that, like the flatlanders, the sphere cannot believe in dimensions other than his own. -- The women in Flatland and in this piece are dangerous, pointed lines, the soldiers are isosceles, impure triangles, and the highest members of this two dimensional hierarchy are such intense hexadecagons that they become circles.

Collaborators

Sculpture: Jene Highstein
Music composed and performed: Jane Wang
Light design: Trevor Brown
Concept, construction, manipulation: Hanne Tierney

First performed at the Next Wave Artist’s in Action series at BAM, Brooklyn, NY, 1998