The Exact Right Amount of Force

The Exact Right Amount of Force is a devised performance about endurance, grief and togetherness--affects that emerge from acts of civil disobedience and direct action. This performance took place at the University of Virginia's Ruffin Gallery on October 4, 2024. It responds in part to the SWAT team raid of the University of Virginia's encampment for Gaza, one of many destroyed in Spring of 2024.

This excerpt takes place at the beginning of the 20-minute performance. In the beginning, toxic tools are held unsustainably by a precarious guardian (Jess Robbins). A newcomer (Ben Cunningham) shakes the foundation, the guardian drops the tools, and the collected energy is dispersed.

At this moment in the performance, when the objects are dropped, a live score begins that shapes the rest of the performance. Later on in this work, people (Strings Applewood and Piera Goldstein-Yerkes) work together frantically to protect themselves and each other from the toxic tools dropped at the outset. They fail to complete this task before time runs out, marked by a sharp change in the sound. Grief (Alma Rayan) disperses the players left onstage, whether they accept its power gracefully or resist it with force. When grief has cleared the stage, an unpredictable transformation (Rachel Austin) has space to develop. In the end, all the characters repurpose the tools, using them to create vibrations that envelop them.

This performance was generated in part by the performers through sequences of guided improvisation and conversations around our personal and collective experiences of political organizing, authoritarian architecture, direct action, police violence, grief and transformation. The Exact Right Amount of Force aims to rehearse emotional arcs that will be required of us in the ongoing project of liberation.

This performance activates Conrad Cheung’s “The Threat, The ________”: a constellation of objects historically designed to secure, restrict, enclose, and enforce. A range of riot gear; a concrete cast of Mussolini’s bunker; a series of robotized turnstiles; and a replicated fragment of a “serpentine wall” designed by Thomas Jefferson to segregate white University of Virginia students from the Black enslaved laborers who constructed the University. All these items sit atop a 4-foot-tall stage that is an acidic, caution-tape yellow and is built site-specifically to fill up the gallery.

"The Threat, The " documentation image courtesy of Conrad Cheung.

Directed by Adrian Wood.

Fabrication by the Institute for Improvisational Infrastructures (Conrad Cheung).

Performed by Strings Applewood, Jess Robbins, Ben Cunningham, Piera Goldstein-Yerkes, Alma Rayan, Rachel Austin.

Live score by Adrian Wood (Sugarlift).

Video by Jolinna Li and Anna Hogg. Above photos are stills from the video documentation..

Special thanks to Emma Todd, Lily Bukalski, Avarice Stankiewicz, Jess Robbins, Benjamin Coe, Daisy Dudley, Arthur Brill, Shari Robinson, the Richmond Homeschool Resources Group, Bart Muzzarelli, Melissa Goldman, Trevor Kemp, Kevin Everson, Eric Schmidt, Elena Yu, and Gary Wood.