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Walking up the isle
"Greenland Y2K" finds our heroine far from humanity on a lone New Year's Eve trek with unreliable technology, unpalatable adventure foods and a an unshakeable bug.
By JOSHUA TANZER
Offoffoff.com
Many of us plan to be as far away as possible from Times Square this momentous New Year's Eve, but few farther than Susanna Speier. Speier's one-woman, one-insect show finds her trekking the length of Greenland in a white disco-era jumpsuit as Y2K approaches, an "Explornographer" (which is not as dirty as it sounds) on a mission to plant a time capsule at the North Pole to be opened a thousand years hence.
The story begins with Speier as Leif Ericsson — whose father first discovered Greenland — landing on the frigid island in approximately Y1K, and our heroine's subsequent trek is interspersed with reminiscences from Lady Jane Franklin, whose adventurer husband was lost there in the 19th century. Compared with these characters, the Explornographer has it easy, loaded with navigation and communications technology and conveniently provisioned with Power Bars and Tang.
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| GREENLAND Y2K | Written and performed by: Susanna Speier.
Directed by: David Cote.
Also featuring Ian McCulloch.
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How the rest of us back in civilization will fare when the Y2K bug bites is uncertain (we at Offoffoff.com are already feverishly printing out articles to distribute by hand on trendy Lower East Side and Williamsburg street corners in case the Internet crashes on New Year's Eve), but Speier confronts the breakdown of technology by herself in the least human of climes. Is the Bug, with whom she comes face-to-face, responsible for a worldwide breakdown, or is she suffering a personal breakdown where no one can hear her scream?
Humanity can search for the answer with Speier on the Here stage for three more weeks or face the future uncertainly on Dec. 31.
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OCTOBER 17, 1999
OFFOFFOFF.COM • THE GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK
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