CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Illinois artist Deke Weaver will premiere a solo multimedia performance this fall with stories of man-eating tigers and the devastating impact of climate change.
“TIGER” is the fifth performance in Weaver’s project “The Unreliable Bestiary,” which will present a performance for each letter of the alphabet, representing an endangered animal or habitat.
“A lot of the shows end up becoming shows not about animals in particular, but more about our relationship with them and how we humans are relating to animals and relating to their habitats,” said Weaver, a professor of new media in the University of Illinois School of Art and Design.
In spite of the serious nature of its subject matter, Weaver insists the show is funny.
Previous performances in “The Unreliable Bestiary” were “MONKEY,” “ELEPHANT,” “WOLF” and “BEAR.” Weaver describes “TIGER” as more intimate than the other “Unreliable Bestiary” performances: “Part Spalding Gray, part Laurie Anderson, ‘TIGER’ might feel like a travelogue, a séance, a Parisian salon: dark, thoughtful humor for the Anthropocene.”
One of the fascinating facts he discovered was that there are more tigers kept as pets in the state of Texas than there are tigers living in the wild. In his performance, Weaver looks at our ideas of tigers, ranging from stories of man-eating tigers to “The Jungle Book” to the cartoon Tony the Tiger.
“I’m comparing all that with a real tiger – all our human imaginations and projections and power struggles and mistakes – and putting that up against the stories about these creatures that are just incredible in what they can do,” he said.
For example, tigers in the Sundarbans – a mangrove forest in India and Bangladesh at the mouth of the Ganges Delta – have become adept at living in an aquatic environment, swimming in the rivers and hunting while swimming. The area is home to a reserve for Bengal tigers that are notoriously aggressive toward humans and kill dozens of people each year.
Performances of “TIGER” will take place in locations along the length of the Mississippi River and its watershed. One of the show’s themes is finding similarities between the river cultures of the Mississippi and Ganges rivers, using the metaphor of constant change.
The Sundarbans are predicted to be gone by 2070 due to rising water levels, destroying not only tiger habitat but the home of hundreds of thousands of people, Weaver said. At the other end of the Ganges River, the glaciers that are the source of the Ganges are melting and predicted to be gone by 2050. Between the glaciers and the ocean lives 9% of the world’s population.
Weaver uses stories to reflect wider global concerns. His “TIGER” performance will incorporate stories of migration due to climate change.
“This performance is a lot about the fortressing of nature, saying ‘This is nature. This is not nature.’ That split in the way we live and how we think is the crux of the way things are in terms of climate change and resource extraction and things that are putting the environment in a really rough place right now,” Weaver said.
Before each performance, Weaver will ask audience members to write down signs of climate change they have noticed in their towns. The answers will be displayed on a screen at the beginning of the show.
Weaver will perform “TIGER” at several Midwestern locations this fall, in theaters and other performance spaces, but he is also looking for people to host small performances in homes and backyards. “TIGER” will open with private house shows in mid-September before its public premiere Sept. 27 at Meadowbrook Park in Urbana. Weaver considers the logistics of creating those shows a part of the project as much as the performances themselves.
“I like the idea of talking to individual people about how we are going to set this up in your house. What kind of conversation do we want to have afterward?” Weaver said.
Locally, “TIGER” can be seen Sept. 27 at Meadowbrook Park, Oct. 5 at the Allerton Park Music Barn and Nov. 7 at the Krannert Art Museum auditorium as part of the School of Art and Design Faculty Exhibition and the IPRH “Animal Turn” research cluster. The shows are free and open to the public.
Weaver will also perform in Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Bemidji, St. Cloud and Minneapolis, Minnesota; Cincinnati; Louisville, Kentucky; Nashville, Tennessee; Hattiesburg, Mississippi; and New Orleans.
Weaver received support for “TIGER” from a Guggenheim Fellowship, an IPRH-Ragdale Residential Creative Fellowship, the Center for Advanced Study and the Campus Research Board.