Goat Island announces their last show ever...

From an email today....e

Dear Friends,

At our first work-in-progress of our new performance presented last Sunday at The Chicago Cultural Center, we announced that this, our ninth performance, will be our last. We have attached the complete text of the announcement for you to read.

We began working on this performance with a research trip to Zagreb a year ago. We plan to premier the work in fall, 2007. After we have completed creating and performing it, the company will end.

This decision comes from the challenge that all artists face: how to continue to grow, to venture into the unknown. We intend this end to present itself as a beginning. We have considered what comes after Goat Island – the multiple futures of company members, associate members, friends, audiences, students – those encountered and those yet to be encountered. We will do what we can to help sustain and multiply the practices of collaboration that the 20+ years of Goat Island have brought us. Each of us will continue to work in, and to advocate for, the field of performance. Our attitude as we arrive at this decision is one of gratefulness. It is time to find the change that growth necessitates. We end Goat Island in order to make a space for the unknown that will follow.

We have initiated this change ourselves, not in response to internal or external adversity, but creatively. We approach it, as we have tried to approach all changes – through a collaborative creative process. We want to provide an example of ending, of lastness, but it is an example we have not yet defined. We hope to discover that example through the two-year process of making this performance.

As always, thank you for your continued support of and interest in our work. We look forward to sharing the performance with you.

Sincerely,

Goat Island