‘Visions in Motion 2020’ presents century of art in defiance of conformity

Multimedia performance inspired by artist’s family connection to the Blacklist

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Attendees of Key City Public Theatre’s “Visions in Motion 2020” will be treated to a multimedia interpretation of 20th Century history that was sparked by one woman’s examination of her own family’s unique political history.

Artist and producer Andrea Lawson is the granddaughter John Howard Lawson, a member of the “Hollywood 10,” who was jailed for refusing to answer questions about his political beliefs during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1947, which resulted in him being blacklisted.

The younger Lawson read her grandfather’s autobiography after she’d taken her two daughters to Igor Stravinsky and Vaslav Nijinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” ballet in 2005, whose choreography by Glen Tetley inspired her own series of “The Rite of Spring” paintings.

It was only after she’d created those paintings that she read her grandfather’s autobiography and realized that he had also been influenced by a production of “The Rite of Spring,” except that his was choreographer Leonide Massine’s version in the 1920s.

“The coincidence of this generational ‘Rite of Spring’ inspiration became the seed of ‘Visions in Motion 2020,’” said Lawson, who’s worked with a team of adults and teens to combine music, visual art, dance, poetry and theater in a celebration of the ways in which she believes creative expression has triumphed over oppression, from 1920 to 2020. “People forget, but when ’The Rite of Spring’ was first performed in 1913, it caused riots.”

The installation includes scenes from John Howard Lawson’s expressionist play, “Roger Bloomer,” as well as a new dance with choreography by Andrea Lawson’s daughter, Heather Hamilton — to signify cycles of change and renewal, along with freedom of speech and social justice — plus original poetry, plus costumes, sets and an exhibit of new artwork by Andrea Lawson.

“My grandfather was jailed with Dalton Trumbo, and yet, so many people don’t know who the Hollywood 10 were,” said Lawson, who researched her grandfather’s archives of scripts and correspondence at Southern Illinois University. “Like an art exhibit, we’ll have a history of the Blacklist in the lobby. These people went to jail to protect our freedom of speech.”

Sam Cavallaro, one of the actors in the production, started acting with the Key City Players in the summer of 1994, after his freshman year of high school, and has been in every Shakespeare play in Chetzemoka Park since the 2006 production of “The Taming of the Shrew.”

“I didn’t know about John Howard Lawson before, although I had heard of the Hollywood 10, and knew a bit about HUAC and McCarthy in the Senate,” Cavallaro said. “I read the script and thought, ‘This is interesting.’ It seemed ahead of its time, and there are some really effective scenes in it.”

Hamilton credits her first interest in choreography to Ling Hui’s Dance in Port Townsend, where she studied dance for more than a decade.

As a student at Whitman College, Hamilton was assistant choreographer for the play “Antigo-Nick,” an interpretation of the tragedy “Antigone” by Sophocles, and she choreographed a piece to accompany a performance of a prelude for Mozart’s “Requiem.”

“The prelude was written by music composition students, and I had the extreme fortune of getting to choreograph the dance in collaboration with their newly evolving pieces,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton sees “Visions in Motion 2020” as exploring topics that are vital to our time, by drawing connections between the present and history, and meditating upon both environmental and social damage and decay.

“We can find hope and motivation, not only to acknowledge, but also to begin to resolve the many challenges we are presented with,” Hamilton said. “This project is an opportunity for such boisterous creativity. It is made of expansive, web-like collaborations of different artists and media. The relationships between these parts, that are at once distinct and connected, make it a fascinating process of creation, and I hope, a particularly engaging and thought-provoking audience experience.”

Hamilton has found it rewarding to work so closely with her mother on an artistic project of this size.

“I grew up watching her paint, playing in her studio while she worked, and learning from her what it takes to be a creative person,” Hamilton said. “It’s wonderful to be making something with her.”

The other collaboration Hamilton has treasured has been with the dancers in her piece — Lily O’Shea, Anna Hansen, Lauren Ehnebuske and Hanna Frahn — whose “enthusiasm and keen interpretations of my intentions” have been vital.

“We’re ultimately communicating things that I think are integral to human, and nonhuman, lives, from cycles and collapse, to the many lines of light that emerge from the remains,” Hamilton said.

Show times are 7 p.m. on Feb. 1 and 8, and 2 p.m. on the Sundays Feb. 2 and 9.