This play is a collaboratively-created, process-focused work that is an offering in experimental theatre for our community.  We work with the intention to create a space where communing, magic, and the impossible might be tempted to emerge. 

The play's story follows the myth of Isis (Egyptian goddess of nature, transformation & rebirth) which tells of the heartbreak of losing her beloved husband/brother Orsius, and her quest to assemble his body parts (that have been dismembered and scattered far and wide) in order to bring him back to life to conceive their child Horus.  In our altered, modern, re-assembled telling of this ancient tale, her journey is supported and challenged by a shape-shifting ensemble. Hers is the archetypal search for that which has been lost beyond comprehension, beyond retrievability.  It asks us what are we seeking in those times when we desperately try to member together the parts of our lives that have died.  Isis’ tale runs parallel to and intersects with that of our larger world’s- our larger hopes and fears- as a world echoing that of present-day Chernobyl comes alive in the play. What remains or is born when everything we've known falls away- when identity and our entire "known way of life" are obliterated? If our worst collective and personal fears come true and we must bear the effects of our long-suppressed shadows released- how do we deal with the reality of being irrevocably changed?  What happens when love itself seems to fall away?  Does it re-emerge in ever more new and wonderful forms, (or strange and uncertain ones)?

The substance of this play has, and continues to, emerge out of a deep need - to understand, to grapple with, to play with these questions. The actors and myself have been immersed in a bodily process of personal discovery since January; pushing and pulling and reaching beyond our limitations in a desire to more intimately know the relationship between our individual lives and the larger story.   I ask my audience to open themselves to these questions; not to their answering, but to be available to the dialogue that will be happening all around and through them.  Together, we weave this story and invite the sublime.  The playing comes to have meaning- to dazzle us, make us laugh, to humble or shake us- only in the spaces between actor and audience, the spaces between what we've know and what we cannot comprehend, the spaces between our very cells.  I invite you too, to open yourself to these questions in supporting our project at whatever level you are inspired to do so!

Who's Who

I am thrilled to currently have the following beautiful people involved in The Isis- Chernobyl Project: Hector Rivera, Jordan Frye, Kristen Nash, Meg Agnew, Miranda Wright, Robert Allen, & Sarah Hardcastle as cast, Beth Craig, Francis Morris & Gabrielle Senza on cello, George Veale, Jacob Fossom, & Justin Delisnore in the design crew, and Joseph Wheaton on multi-media.

Where Your Money Goes Toward:

Fabric Sets, Minimal Costumes & props, Promotional Materials, & Teeny-Tweeny Gratitude Stipends for the Designers, Musicians, and Actors. It does NOT include a gratitude stipend for the director/producer: moi.   

While our minimum budget is $3,700 we actually need $8,000 in order to pay everyone a more substantial gratitude (over $100/person).  

With Love, 

Pooja Roo Prema, 

Director, "Isis-Chernobyl"

Rogue Angel Productions

(Thanks to Ned Oliver for photography and Cristina Horton for filming!)