Keep Coming Back Because is a multimedia performance and theater piece that addresses memory, family, and identity. Ryan Conarro (Conarro’s brother) and Conarro devised this piece by sharing memories of their childhood and how it shaped and developed them. They combined these stories into an out-of-time narrative collage. The stage design consisted of artifacts from their family home, projections, and mobile plexiglass panels. The projections, consisting of stop motion animations, family slideshows, home movies, and excerpts from popular television shows of the ‘80s and ‘90s, served to connect the elements of the elliptical narrative. The plexiglass panels were wheeled around the stage by the duo, changing the stage plot throughout the performance. The plexiglass panels were used as barriers, windows, projection surfaces and semi-transparent canvases for live painting. The performers alternated between monologue, dialogue, and singing original songs, which the duo wrote in collaboration with composer Ellen Reid.

Keep Coming Back Because was an exploration for the duo to connect with one another and the audience on the shared experience of having a complicated relationship with the past, home, and memories. For some, home represents a womb where one feels protected from the outside world. For others, home represents a warzone. For many, home is some combination of these ideas. This piece explores how we remember our past, how our relationship to it changes, and how it undeniably shaped us. Why do we keep coming back? What do we remember? How can we take control of those memories to create an accurate personal origin story?

Music: Ellen Reid | Projections: Katie Basile | Lighting: J. Bradley | Dramaturgy: Kevin Riordan | Costumes: Giselle Stone | Choreography: Ricci Adan

Presented by Generator Theater Company at Rockwell Ballroom, Juneau, Alaska, 2013.