Chess is widely regarded as an intellectual game, and often used as inspiration in cerebral artworks. This is checkers.

Monster Romp originated as a short film featuring a game of checkers. Monster Romp Live!, a performance in three acts, is an extension of that film. The first is a satire of fascist militaristic displays of power, self­regulation, punishment, and torture. The following act is an improvisational dance by a mercurial creature, performed by Samantha­Jane Gray. The third act is a violent, slapstick battle between the last two remaining pieces on the board.

The game of checkers is a contest between two oppositional forces divided by superficial difference. In Monster Romp, checkers embodies the inherent brutality of binary opposition. Two monsters conjoined at the head, the Twins, play an unfriendly game, pitting the checkers against one another. The pressure created by antagonistic relationships erupts into violence between and within both sides.

Los Angeles based artists BeckandCol use humor and chaos to examine the crisis of human exceptionalism. Through costume based performance and video, their work explores alternate universes populated with monsters who obsess over humanity and emulate its dominant attributes. Within these universes, BeckandCol analyze humanity’s construction of sexualized, racialized and naturalized others. The monsters are at once silly, playful and exceptionally brutal. Through comical yet violent antics, their monsters are both mimicking human behaviors and challenging them.

Made possible in part by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

doors at 7pm, performance at 8pm

suggested donation $5