Jillian Peña’s Constellations and Influences, part II:

“I’m also deeply moved by Derek Jarman’s Blue. It’s incredible how the voice alone can create such movement, ambiance, and texture.

Truthfully I’m very inspired by television. I hate movies. I hate that they end and are over. Television comes back, it’s always there. You can get attached to the characters because you will get to know them over years. You can imagine a past and a future more actively than with a 90 minute movie. I want Polly Pocket to be more related to television. I want to work on it for many seasons, and I hope that you can fall in and out of love with Alex, Andrew, and Kyli. I like the idea of a long-format dance performance that you actually watch incrementally over 5 years.

There are two writers that I always feel influenced by and especially with this piece – Michel Foucault and Luce Irigaray. I feel like it’s an obvious choice to say Foucault, but Discipline and Punish is something I’m always thinking about in the architecture of bodies in space and the relationship of those structures to discipline. I’m taken by how Luce Irigaray proposes that men prefer the relationship of one to many whereas women are always considering a relationship of one to one. This has been a big inspiration in Polly Pocket in how the couple creates “gifts” for each other.“

Polly Pocket: Expansion Pack premieres this Thursday.