Simple Silence
It seems like such an easy request: a simple silence. A stillness without the weight of work or love or death. A moment in between. But we have learned there is an almost impossible gap between this ambition and the reality of living, that our silence is never simple. In the flickering light, we hold our breaths, anticipating the storm. Something must be lost before it can be found. A Simple Silence is the final chapter in Riverbed Theatre’s award-winning “Just For You” Trilogy that premiered in Venice in 2022 with All That Remains and continued in 2023 with Over the Rainbow. This new 360VR experience continues the series’ exploration of our connectedness to the world around us, imbuing the environment with an animistic quality while also blurring the boundary between seeing and being seen. The audience is not a witness to the experience; they are the experience. A Simple Silence confronts us with the uneasiness of our inevitable truths, that every beginning implies an ending, that we are shadows passing through the darkness.
As the Artistic Director of the Taipei-based Riverbed Theatre Company, Craig has written and directed over fifty original image-based performances, including productions in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, France, Germany, and the United States. He is also a sculptor and installation artist whose work has been shown at the Asian Biennial, Venice Biennale Collateral Events, Kobe Biennale, Taipei Biennale, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei MOCA, and the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art. His VR experience, All That Remains, premiered at the 79th Venice Film Festival (2022) and won the prize for Best Immersive Experience at the 2023 Luxembourg Film Festival and Best 360VR Film at the Kaohsiung Film Festival. His second VR experience, Over the Rainbow, premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival and was selected for the "Best of" section for the 80th Venice Film Festival (2023). The project won the Panorama Prize at the Festival du Noveau Cinema. His most recent project, A Simple Silence, will premiere at the Venice FIlm Festival. Craig was selected by FIlmmaker Magazine as one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2023. A former Fulbright Senior Scholar and Mellon Foundation Humanities Unbounded Fellow, Craig received his Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and is a Professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Grinnell College.
