The Hard Man was a four minute object-based performance piece first created for Snapshots (2009), produced between Puppet Animation Scotland and the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. It was subsequently developed further for Manipulate 2010, also at the Traverse.
Inspired by the essay Battling the hard man: Notes on addiction to the pornography of violence (2007), Benjamin’s DeMott tells us that the Hard Man in all of us survives and thrives on the consumption of violent images and the fleeting sensation of empowerment when others dare to (or actually) destroy. For the Hard Man, feeling alive is comes from the destruction of any thing and any one. For DeMott this is the reason that the hard man is not a human being. Now the central figure is battling the hard man because, like DeMott was at the time of writing this piece, he is dying and looking to reclaim his humanity before it is too late.
This piece dramatizes DeMott’s powerful ideas about the impact of a culture that creates and consumes violence as it does any other commodity through a highly visual, object-based performance. The central figure’s battle is played out via the objects in his life: toys and puppets belonging to his children; the forgotten, broken, and exquisite objects of his youth, marriage, and prolific career; the bric-a-brac of his physical world as the players of this ultimate psychic dilemma. In a fast-paced, expressionistic performance style, the central figure encounters these objects as he interrogates the icy presence of the Hard Man once and for all.
2009 Production
Performers: Amanda Monfrooe, John C. Gilmour
Video: Anna Henson
Sound: Bob Techno
2010 Production
Performers: Amanda Monfrooe, Simon Hart
Sound: Bob Techno
