DISTANCE FREQUENCIES
A Psychogeographies Project
October 2020-July 2021
CREATED BY Randy Baker, Kylos Brannon, Jenny McConnell Frederick, Roc Lee, Tosin Olufolabi, Doug Robinson, Debra Kim Sivigny, Jonelle Walker
A lost letter reveals a hidden alliance. A familiar fragrance revives ancient memories. A forbidden love sends ripples 100 years into the future. What unseen history does each corner of a city hold? If you stand in just the right spot and listen closely, you can hear the past… and maybe even the future.
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIES is Rorschach Theatre’s visionary new experience that takes participants to unexpected locations around their city while a season-long fictional narrative plays out over layers of history and magic realism. Guests receive a box in the mail monthly that includes a new Chapter in the story, each box containing hand-crafted objects – letters, drawings, souvenirs, photos, or even snacks – and a map to a location in their city. The season ends with a live in-person event that culminates the story.
Participants can begin their adventure at any time and a subscription includes Seven Chapters + a link to a video of the culminating performance that took place in July 2021.
“A scrappy D.C. theater company with an edgy modern aesthetic, Rorschach Theatre doesn’t ordinarily recruit, as set designer, the Gilded Age sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. But Rock Creek Cemetery’s famous Adams Memorial — with its shrouded figure by Saint-Gaudens — is one of the backdrops to Rorschach’s latest production, “Distance Frequencies.” A season-long immersive experience, “Distance Frequencies” sends audiences on monthly excursions to lesser-traveled Washington-area sites, where landscapes — together with the contents of curated mailed packages — help conjure a mysterious overarching story that is partly set in those locations.”
What is PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIES?
“Psychogeography” is a term coined by philosopher Guy Debord in the 1950s and refers to the intersection of psychology and geography. Our own psychological experiences of a city reveal hidden places – forgotten, discarded, or marginalized aspects of an urban environment. Locations have a history, a soul, a meaning beyond the dirt and bricks that surround it. These meanings range from the historical to the aesthetic to the personal, but all of these things give the space its resonance.
