Permanent Fatal Errors was an experimental theatre production, created and performed by the Permanent Fatal Errors Company, of which I was one of twelve members. The work was conceived and directed by David R. Gammons.
The piece was developed over an 8-month period, and used speech, movement, audio recordings, and performance to explore written communication through the ages. Source text was drawn from a variety of sources, including letters, twitter, and instant messages.
I created two segments based on the death of John Cheever. In the first, I played John, sitting at a typewriter and reading excerpts letters written in the months prior to his death.
For the second segment, I was a tearful Ben Cheever, John’s Son. I opened and read a final letter from John, as an audio recording of an imagined final letter from John played on the theatre’s soundsystem. I created this letter using exclusively text from Cheever’s novel Falconer. I distorted and edited the audio to illustrate Ben’s process of grief.