Don DeLillo’s 2001 novella, The Body Artist, is at once a ghost story and a love story. Lauren Hartke — a performance artist whose work crosses the limits of the body — lives on a lonely coast in a rambling rented house. After a catastrophic event, she encounters a changeling with uncanny knowledge of her own life. Together they journey into a spare, seductive outpost of grief, time, and love. The Guardian proclaimed it “a distilled meditation on perception and loss, and a poised, individual ghost story for the twenty-first century.”
DeLillo himself gave director/writer Jody McAuliffe permission to adapt The Body Artist for the stage. She worked with acclaimed set designer and Duke alum Jim Findlay to stage a workshop performance at New York’s Abrons Arts Center in 2017. Duke Performances presents the world premiere of the production, with both audience and action on the same stage at Reynolds Industries Theater. Tavish Miller plays the changeling, and Rachel Jett — the artistic director of the National Theater Institute — plays the haunted, haunting body artist.