999: Selections from "The Annihilation of the Rose"

Workshop: Panoply Performance Lab, 2013
Reading: Cameo Gallery, 2011

Co-written by Benjamin Simington and Michael Clemow
Actors: Benjamin Simington, Michael Clemow
Live sound design: Michael Clemow

"999: Selections from 'The Annihilation of the Rose'" is a performance based on the short story "Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv" by Jorge Luis Borges.  The story is about the failed campaigns of a Persian religious and military leader during the Abbasid period who went by Al-Muqanna "The Veiled One."  Borges fabricates one source text in order to create a sense of historicity around his poetic license.  A conceit of the performance is that more of this fictional text has been discovered since the Borges story was published.  In the performance the text is folded in on itself by quoting the Borges story as portions the supposedly newly discovered source.