Fear in Search of a Reason

Fear in Search of a Reason is a performance experiment, in collaboration with theatre director and choreographer Sommer Ulrickson, on the dissection and re-elaboration of the anxious condition in biological psychiatry and everyday life. Scientific and clinical explanations, philosophical arguments and culturally available stereotypes around anxiety will be confronted with the ineffable private and experiential condition of anxiety. Involving dialogue, movement, music and readings, the piece and its methodology explore an interface-ground between the territories of neuroscience and the performing arts. Scientific theories, texts, and images around the causes, symptoms, experience and treatment of anxiety will be rendered into movement and theatrical action, exploring channels and boundaries of performativity. Born in Sicily, Giovanni Frazzetto was educated in the UK. For over a decade he has worked at the interface between science, society, the arts, and culture. His transdisciplinary research focuses on behavioral neuroscience and on its societal and cultural implications. Giovanni is currently an ICI Fellow and also a writer exploring the space between the literary and the scientific, the personal and the biological. Born in California, Sommer Ulrickson moved to Germany in 1998. She co-founded the ‘wee dance company’ with whom she created several pieces and toured throughout Germany and Europe. She continued to work as a director and choreographer receiving state funding and commissions from various theaters to create original works. Christoph Michael Schüchner was born in Tirol and grew up in Upper Austria. He graduated from Schauspielschule Volkstheater Wien. After ten years at the Luzerner Theater, Theater Lubbock, and at the Vereinigten Städtischen Bühnen Krefeld and Mönchengladbach, he is now working as a freelance actor.Giovanni Frazzetto and Sommer Ulrickson, Fear in Search of a Reason, performance, ICI Berlin, 25 March 2011