Reimagining the Days of Our Lives
(Page 2 of 2)
January / February 2003
Karen Olson Utne magazine
While it may seem odd for a theater company to be working on a
calendar, the evolution was natural for Hardman, several of whose
shows over the last few years have commemorated seasonal cycles and
events. One of Antenna’s most celebrated productions is Hardman’s .
: . sands . : . of . : . time . : ., a
millennium show in which visitors trudge along 1,300 feet of raked
sand on a beach, listening on headsets to a retelling of the
history of the universe. At the end of the walk, each visitor picks
up one grain of sand. That single grain represents the last 2,000
years. “This is the kind of time we perceive when we’re dealing
with checkbooks and life and diaries,” Hardman says. “But the beach
is really the amount of time we’ve taken to get from the beginning
of time to now.”
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The ECOlogical Calendar, a direct outgrowth of the . : .
sands . : . of . : . time . : . event,
is intended to put people in touch with a broader view of time. In
addition to our current count of 2003, Hardman’s calendar adds 13.4
billion years to today’s date, the closest estimate scientists have
for a Big Bang start to the universe. But like an Advent calendar,
it also resacralizes time and, as Hardman puts it, “gets us to
think about the days as events in themselves, sitting in the
process of the movement of nature.”
Still, Hardman is a realist. The numbers of each date remain in
small print on the calendar as a concession to the modern world—so
you can use the ECOlogical Calendar to schedule get-togethers with
friends as well as to ponder the vast reaches of cosmic time.
Karen Olson is senior editor of Utne.
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