Performance Art
Research-Creation Project
RE-worlding Neurodivergent Creation (2025)
Created by: Ian McCormack with Concordia University’s PULSE Lab (Performative Urbanism Lab for Spatial, Social, and Scenographic Experimentation). Funded by the 2025 CUSRA Award.
‘RE-Worlding Neurodivergent Creation’ is a Research-Creation project investigating spatial curation as a neurodivergent dramaturg as it intersects with new media technologies. Using digital capturing technologies such as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and the three-dimensional modelling software Blender, this project explores the potentiality of “RE-worlding” and somatic creation through a phenomenological experience centred in D/disability (Sandahl 2002).
What does it mean to exist in a neurotypical world, as a neurodivergent body? To exist in a curated reality set toward disorientation as the only viable trajectory. As neurodivergent bodies, we weave through this world as assets: three-dimensional objects to be arranged, displayed and fetishized. It is this objectification of my own neurodivergent body and mind that orients my creation process. But is it possible to create further? To create an artificial space/world intricately created for the neurodivergent body/artist, not solely for the purpose of unapologetically creating, but to challenge the neurotypical hierarchical dominance in performance creation spaces.
(Keywords: Research-Creation, Digital Dramaturgy, Neurodivergent Theatre Practice, New Media and LiDAR Technologies, Spatial Creation).
Performance installation
Fractured Transitions (2025)
Co-created and performed by: Ian McCormack and Marie-Ange Sparrow in Collaboration with Concordia University and Canadian Centre for Architecture.
‘Fractured Transitions’ is a research-creation installation piece exploring the potentiality of a live dialogue and looped soundscape in the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s transitional space: a corridor separating the historic Shaughnessy House from the modern wing of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). As these two mediums gesture to one another, they share a transitional history of architectural curation and a woman’s ability to push boundaries. This transitory valve holds great importances, a threshold space between the old, the new and meticulous efforts of care put into this site. At the centre of this performance is a clashing dialogue between the hands who archive this work and the sounds of CCA ritual and history. ‘Fractured Transitions’ foregrounds ongoing discussions between two artists as they question and renegotiate their positionality and encounters within the site.
(Keywords: Performance-based Installation, Durational Piece, Live Dialogue, Site-Specific Performance, Archival Excavation, Historic Storytelling, Verbatim Theatre, Bilingualism, Intermedia, and
Theatre-for-One).
Performance installation
Pumping Up Strength (2025)
Co-created and performed by: Kathy Jin and Ian McCormack.
An investigation of humanity’s respire. This performative piece is about displaying a live version of the inner workings of human lungs and the mechanism of inflation and deflation to mimic a similar method of inhaling and exhaling. Whilst using a pump to simulate this system, we buried the subject with a blank white sheet as they would contort, expand, and contract to reflect the motion of a breathing body. The performance was integrated with several participants’ breathing sequences hence resulting in a curated soundscape. As each sequence was edited with distortions and manipulation, the audio depicts the number of ways our embodied selves breathe in moments of emotions. Through the use of live projection, improvised coordination and sound, this time-based work emulated one breath at a time.
(Keywords: Performance-based Installation, Mental Health, Movement work, Breathe-oriented Action, Durational piece, Live Projection, Somatic Practice, Soundscape).
Performance installation
Big Comfy (2024)
Co-created and performed by: Baird Duncan, Serena Masciotra, Ian McCormack, and Juliana Theodoropoulos.
A durational installation piece tackling themes of nostalgia, haunting, mundanity, and remembrance. Blending the classic horror aesthetic with childhood nostalgia and the uncanny, ‘Big Comfy’ acts as a spacial anomaly, distorting time as you sit down and watch TV. So join us for a birthday party as we celebrate the hands that lurk under you.
(Keywords: Puppetry, Performance-based Installation, Durational Piece, Horror Absurdism, Movement work, The Uncanny, Scenographic Curation, Spatial Design, Clown).
Performance
Mother Dirt Fights The Idiots of The World (2023)
Performance by Bread & Puppet Theatre; and done as a part of 2023 Bread & Puppet Apprenticeship Program in Glover, Vermont.
Known to make grown men cry love-tears, Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann in New York City’s Lower East Side. From their earliest productions, the theater focused on addressing issues of their community, including rent, rats, and police.
The final performance was presented as a part of the 2023 Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival at Entrepôt 77.
(Keywords: Political Puppetry, “Radical Nonsense”, Street Performance, Circus, Performing Objects, Parade, Cantastoria, Protest Theatre, Live Music and Shape Notes).
Digital Performance
Amos (2021)
Written by : Darwin Parkes and Bee Goldgruber
Directed by: Darwin Parkes
Videography and Edited by: Ian McCormack
Performed by Bee Goldgruber, Ian McCormack, and Darwin Parkes.
‘Amos’ is a visual recording of the mental decline of a non-binary individual struggling with suicidal ideation and the expectations of society. The play follows Amos as they spiral further into disassociation, affecting those around them.
The script was born out of conversations surrounding stigma around mental health and gender exploration, as well as the long path many non-binary people take to find comfort in their lives and bodies. The script was written by two non-binary people who had very different paths when it came to growing into themselves, but it in no way reflects the journey every non-binary person will make. Diversity is what makes us beautiful.
‘Amos’ premiered at the ON THE EDGE Fringe, as a part of the 2021 Digital Festival.
(Keywords: Digital Theatre, Gender and Sexuality, Mental Health, Surrealist Cinematography, Exploration).
