A Black Box theatre project at Kunsthall Oslo – buy tickets here.
“Jerk might be unbearable for some. But in our eyes, theater so wisely woven with reality, however violent, is wholesome.” Les Inrockuptibles, France
Gisèle Vienne’s Jerk is based on the short story by Dennis Cooper. Jerk is the imagined reconstruction told from the vantage point of David Brooks, the real-life accomplice of Texas serial killer Dean Corll, who was responsible for the deaths of more than twenty teenage boys in the early 1970s. David Brooks is serving a life sentence. In prison he discovers the art of glove puppetry, traditionally used as a means of depicting violent or illicit subject matter. As part of his rehabilitation, he uses the characters of his puppets to reconstruct the murders, which in turn enables him to take responsibility for his role in the crimes.
Jerk is part of a body of works created by Gisèle Vienne in collaboration with Dennis Cooper that probes the connections between fantasy and reality and uses the aesthetic experience as a space to explore the representation of violence.