Valley Traction's DEATH RATTLE to Open This Month

Valley Traction will present DEATH RATTLE, a multimedia fragmentation of Boris Vian's masterpiece The Empire Builders; composed of scavenged text as well as original music and movement. DEATH RATTLE is a live performance based on the play The Empire Builders, written by the French existentialist playwright and jazz musician, Boris Vian. The story follows a family, trapped indoors by a noise, and portrays their ensuing anguish and destruction. This new piece tears that script apart and reassembles it with dialogue and text fabricated from local internet chatter - conversations, images, and video found on Nextdoor, Facebook, and Reddit - created by our Carlisle community.

This piece explores isolation and connectivity, and their effects on individuals and communities. DEATH RATTLE employs an array of new and used technology and forms, a patchwork of sculpture and media, original live sound scores and compositions, and a contemporary punk poetic aesthetic informed by the local culture here in central Pennsylvania.

"In addition to performing this piece in Carlisle, we're submitting this piece to The Philadelphia Fringe Festival said Co-Artistic Director John Werner. We're excited to show this piece locally and then take this great local team of artists, performers, and musicians elsewhere."

"We wanted to convey the feeling of being online said Co-Artistic Director Kent Barrett. We really like that splitting of attention across a dozen open browser tabs."

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