A Near Life Experience is a collaborative experimental theatre-installation that is being developed by Andrea Crnkovic (Croatia) and Sarah Lloyd (USA). The piece is an exploration of the boundaries of conventional theatre forms in order to discover more efficient, intimate and active ways for the audience to engage with the work and its content.

Referring to the concept of Plato’s cave the piece takes us into a modern world cave of appearances and alienation, where even our own selves are consumable good, while outside of our artificial bubble reside the primeval nature and forgotten values of another time.

Through the snapshots of mundane situations in a life of an ordinary person, the piece explores global, modern life phenomena and its complexities. 

Taping into irony, pop culture clichés, and humor, the work is conceived from personal struggles to find meaning, purpose, wellbeing, and hope while navigating through this digitalized, consumer saturated, competitive reality driven by devastating greed of corporate capitalism.

Questions arise: are we, as individuals, too numb, alienated and brianwashed to induce any serious change? Is there a way out of this state of impotence? Intertwining live performance with text, video, strange sounds, and striking imagery, Near Life Experience attempts to create an immersive and intimate journey for the audience, a journey that hopefully inspires and brings the audience closer to their authentic selves.

This first version of the piece was developed during the Kamov residency in collaboration with Prostor Plus - Association for Performative Arts in Rijeka, Croatia, and is intended as ‘work in progress’ to be completed at our earliest convenience.

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Directing, sound, video, set & lighting design by: Andrea Crnkovic and Sarah Lloyd

Performed by: Andrea Crnkovic and Sarah Lloyd