SLC Mainstage Preview: “I’m Very into You”
The ensemble of "I'm Very Into You" perform not only on stage in front of mics, but also in front of a camera that projects live to two perpendicular projection screens. In front of camera. Pictured: Sarah Sterling, MFA’21
Credit: Hallie Riddick
When McKenzie Wark, an Australian media theorist (“A Hacker Manifesto”) and Kathy Acker, an experimental feminist writer (“Blood and Guts in High School”) met in a Sydney bookshop in 1995, they shared a passionate, three-day, hotel room romance. Acker returned to San Francisco, but she and Wark continued to court each other via email—writing to each other multiple times a day, during a very volatile two-weeks
20 years after the correspondence occurred, these emails were published as a single manuscript, entitled “I’m Very into You”—a reference to the final line of one of Acker’s most intimate letters.
LA-based director Sara Lyons, who discovered the book the year of its publication, describes the text in their director’s note as “a remarkable document of an online romance at the dawn of the digital age, a playbook for how two nerds flirt and seduce.” In 2016, Lyons condensed and adapted Acker and Wark’s emails for the stage, reinterpreting the epistolary content as a semi-staged reading.
The piece, also titled “I’m Very into You,” casts multiple actors in the roles of Kathy and McKenzie, creating an ensemble of queer, genderqueer, and feminist voices with a wide range of ages and experiences. The adaptation also has each actor perform a monologue of their own, sharing a personal encounter with sex, love or online communication.
“I'm Very Into You is not really a play. It is an ongoing queer archival performance project,” Lyons says of their creation. “Unapologetic and unafraid, each ensemble puts their own unique experiences in conversation with Kathy and McKenzie.”
I’M VERY INTO YOU
By Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark
Adapted and directed by Sara Lyons
Runs Thursday, Oct. 10, 7pm; Friday, Oct. 11, 6pm & 9pm
Tickets available on Eventbrite for Thursday (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/im-very-into-you-tickets-75254693815).
Friday is sold out, but arrive half an hour early to put your name on the waitlist.