Snake Talk

Created and performed by mara poliak, Layton Lachman and Abby Crain.
Sound Design by Samuel Hertz and Lighting Design by Elizabeth Ardent.

We ooze, leak, wander, scavenge, engulf.
We have forgotten the difference between kissing and eating.

Snake Talk is a zany, disquieting, evening-length California gothic performance, which harnesses the somewhat terrifying aesthetic of the “zany” (as delineated by feminist cultural theorist Sianne Ngai) to confront, consume and transmute patriarchal and neoliberalist frameworks. The structure of the work is predicated on endurance and adaptation from underneath the dominant form.

Snake Talk draws from influences such as teenage pop culture, 90’s goth divas, 70’s feminist iconography, scientific texts on animal behavior, new age spirituality, sci-fi, queer ecology, and amateur porn. It is staged in the void, the lecture hall, and the nightclub, with spatialized sound sources and synesthesic light stylings.

Snake Talk premiered in 2016 at CounterPulse Theater in San Francisco, and toured nationally and internationally.

All photos by Robbie Sweeney unless otherwise noted.