Kaneza Schaal and the feather of the goddess Maat

Meet PS 122 RAMP resident theater artist Kaneza Schaal.

Kaneza Schaal is a New York City based theater artist. Best known for her work as an actor with The Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service, and Richard Maxwell, Kaneza will use RAMP to begin work on her first evening length piece using the Egyptian Book of the Dead as inspiration–seeking to cultivate performance that uses text as a jumping off point and equally values visual, physical, sonic and abstract expression.

“Drawing inspiration from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a text originally intended to provide the living with a blueprint to the afterlife, we will explore light and shadow as a physical and metaphorical architecture. Using analogue projection, sound, text, and dance to animate a series of burial vignettes we will excavate this ancient text to create a new translation. Our inquiry will focus on the scroll’s central metaphor: the weighing of the heart against a feather of the goddess Maat on her divine scale of truth to test its moral worth. The performance proposes burial not as erasure but as offering restitution, performing rites, and creating space for the presence of the absent, the imagined and the longed-for.”

– Kaneza Schaal

Public Showings: April 11 and 12, 8pm

The Chain Theatre
21-28 45th Road, Long Island City, Queens
(map/directions)

For complete information and ticketing, click here.