yet again , vacuum in tow , for some re-re-reinflation .
After the fourth and final pop of the evening , it was clear to the audience that this was unlike any performance they had ever witnessed before .
What is Staging Wittgenstein ? It is Simmons ’ theatrical engagement with a frustrating paradox : the attempt by an Austrian philosopher , Ludwig Wittgenstein , in a booklength work from 1921 called Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus , to express the inexpressibility of language through — yes — language . The piece began at New York University , where Simmons applied for a dean ’ s grant by standing before a panel and verbally pitching the idea to find a way , through live performance , to physicalize this inexpressibility . With her background in visual arts ( she ’ s well-versed in 3-D printing ), Simmons knew she wanted to work with a specific kind of material . “ I was interested in the form of a thing that would refute itself in the end ,” she told me . “ I knew the set and props needed to be made of objects that could build a logical structure — that fell apart in the end .”
Still , what material could be more challenging than Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus from which to create theater ? One day , while watching the Russian equivalent of America ’ s Got Talent , Simmons spotted latex balloons capable of embedding a human body . She intuited that the balloons could physically represent the nature of Wittgenstein ’ s text . Soon , Simmons — along with Nikita Lebedev , a playwriting and dramaturgy student at NYU , here as a performer — had to learn to
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