Caitlyn Swett to share a work-in-progress of Temporality of Survival: A Portrait of Cancer

“Cancer is a rare and still scandalous subject for poetry; and it seems unimaginable to aestheticize the disease.” —Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

Cancer treatment is a multisensory encounter in which time is accelerated, distended, and distorted. In Temporality of Survival: A Portrait of Cancer, Caitlyn Swett dares to depict this maelstrom in an immersive multimedia performance that evocatively combines the embodiment of dance and theater with the liminal state that layered imagery, sound, and memory can unearth.

Swett is a dance artist and musician who works with Culture Mill, a Performing Arts Laboratory in Saxapahaw, NC, and who is a two-time survivor of Hodgkin lymphoma, in remission since September 2023. To help portray this deeply personal and nuanced experience, she studied writer-survivors such as Audre Lorde, Anne Boyer, Walela Nehanda, and Caitlin Breedlove, among others, weaving their insights into the fabric of the performance.

Through movement, words, and projection, lighting, and soundscape design, Temporality of Survival expresses the mortal truths that often cannot or will not be said. Adding to the slim repertoire of survivor stories told by survivors themselves, Swett fearlessly restages her journey while confronting simplistic cultural attitudes about cancer.

The evening-length work, developed with a half dozen collaborators, seeks to metabolize trauma and create a vivid, poetic environment in which audiences can do the same. Above all, it breaks through platitudes and taboos to tell the truth about cancer. It’s about time.

The work-in-progress showing of Temporality of Survival: A Portrait of Cancer can be viewed May 11, 7PM at Shadowbox Studio in Durham, NC. Tech and dress rehearsals will also be open to invited audiences. The broader public can register here for the May 11 showing.

Temporality of Survival: A Portrait of Cancer would not be possible without the generous practices of Culture Mill: the gifting of their studio space and their investment and belief in artists and the stories they tell. This project is supported by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and Durham Arts Council, local grants administrator.