Introduction

Paradise Lost is a performance installation site-specific to a school hall space inspired by a fatal shooting in a school in the town of Paradise, Pennsylvania, USA in 2006. Mixing live and recorded action with music, movement and text, seven performers, one man and six women will create and re-create a forensic re-enactment of this real-life event in which four school children were killed. The performance will take the form of a line of enquiry into notions of faith, religion and (in)fidelity. The research will cut across verbatim accounts of the incident, the belief system of the Amish community and an in depth investigation into what makes a man kill others and then himself.