Story #3
(Gaping Hole)

With Story #3 (Gaping Hole), Rachel Mars and I continued our investigation into radical narrative. This time, Ovalhouse gave us a commission—an invitation to destroy parts of the building. We started thinking about holes.

We blasted an actual hole in the floor and another in the wall of the Upstairs Theatre. Then we made a show: it begins with plot holes in well-known films and ends in something stranger. We reveal an email exchange between us exposing the places we’ve edited our own lives for clarity or comfort. Holes we’ve patched over to keep the story intact.

The whole thing unravels live through a DIY green screen effect. The image fractures, logic breaks down, gaps show.

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In the Shawshank Redemption, wrongly convicted Andy Dufresne spends years digging a tunnel to freedom from his prison cell. He hides his work under a large picture of Rita Hayworth. On the day of his escape, Andy crawls his way towards the outside world and apparently replaces the poster on the wall to mask his escape route.

We’re so emotionally satisfied when Andy rips off his prison uniform in the rain that we forget to ask how he could possibly have replaced the poster from inside the tunnel.

But really—how did he do that?

What holes are we prepared to overlook in order to stay comfortable?

Following Mars and Wohead’s cult hit Story #1, Gaping Hole (Story #3) is the third part in a non-linear trilogy on radical narrative.