Eephus

Spring/Summer 2022 Artist-in-Residence, Automata, Los Angeles

End of Residency Performances: March 12 & 13, 7:30pm

Eephus* is a performance of dance, words, sounds, being, and objects which inhabits the space of a baseball field. Since first developed and performed at PAM Residencies in 2019, Eephus has resided in me as a vast notion and reality: an epistemology to be embodied, a ubiquitous ontology to feel through.
 

In its second iteration of performance, Eephus (previously Eephus Pitch) takes the Eephusian Parable as its score. This is a gesticulation of the eephusian body at play in a game I call null-point baseball. Trapped forever in the cavity of game that the Eephus Pitch so readily carves out, I make null the intents, directives, and objectives otherwise inherent to the game we call “baseball.”
 

With destiny & devotion, genius & myth, theater & drama, grass & sky, I: run from first base to second, never leaving or arriving. I: wait on the bench endlessly. I: hit a homerun forever… As I grow near and far to the positions of the game, its passing, and to time itself, I become…

 
Sound artist Jamie Green plays the drawbar organ and bells.
 

*In “real” baseball, an Eephus Pitch is an extremely slow and high arc-ing pitch thrown strategically to “trick” the batter. Disoriented by its lack of speed and direction, the batter either swings at the ball too soon or doesn’t swing at all, believing the pitch to be a big mistake or “blooper.” The lore goes Maurice Van Robays, Pirates Outfielder, coined the term, remarking “Eephus ain’t nuthin’, and that’s a nuthin’ pitch.” “Eephus” from the Hebrew אֶפֶס (efes): “zero” or “nothing.”