The Tramp Project

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Working with James Agee’s 1947 script, The Tramp’s New World, which was originally written for Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp character, this new project addresses my interest in the congruity of performance and its documentation as an intersection for aesthetic practice.

About This Project

For the past several years, I have been working to create a performance-for-film project centered around James Agee’s 1947 script, The Tramp’s New World. Originally written for Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp character, this project addresses my interest in the congruity of performance and its documentation as an intersection for aesthetic practice.

When I found this screenplay, I was immediately taken with the narrative: a super-atomic bomb is dropped, leaving seemingly just one survivor, the Tramp. As the picture unfolds, it is clear that others have survived and are coalescing around two separate and completely different communities. The first is the Tramp’s community, which has embraced the parameters that the new world has created by rebuilding a community by hand. The second community is made up of the scientists who actually created the bomb and were safe from the blast in their underground bunker. Throughout the film, the scientists attempt to restore their technology and mechanized existence. For a majority of the film, the two communities are unaware that the other exists. Upon learning of the existence of each other, the Tramp’s community (but not the Tramp) is lured to the scientists’ way of life by the ease of technology. In the end, the Tramp, now alone, walks from this new world into the sunset. This screenplay also provides the opportunity to re-envision Chaplin’s classic character, the Tramp, as a female.

Throughout the Tramp Project, I will be generating a set that is a platform for a series of performances. The result of those performances will be a fully edited feature and cinema experience, a series of objects and sets, and a series of production stills, all of which can be interchanged in various exhibitions and screenings that continue to loop from performance to documentation and back to performance again. In essence, the performance is the shooting of the film, the film is the documentation from the performance which is screened to an audience while an experimental band plays a live score, the live score is then edited into the film, which is then rescreened to a new audience…

Project Details

This project officially started at the end of 2012 when I signed the film options contract for the screenplay. In early 2013 I went to Ragdale to start sketching out how I wanted the project to function and began creating stop-animation storyboards for the work.  These storyboards have become my pre-production of each scene/performance/exhibition and artworks unto themselves. The animations include moments with flaming goats, pigs in sailor suits, a rat receiving brain surgery, and a mouse that falls in love with a supercomputer. And those are just in the opening scenes.  

I am looking to fund my main actress and my director of photography with this campaign.  Anything above and beyond the goal will go toward set-production and film permits. I am aiming to have the entire work shot by the last months of 2015, and I hope to premiere the film portion of the work in 2016. 

Thank yous

Contribute any amount or choose from the levels below.

• $25
  A personal thank you in the movie credits ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $50
  A signed print of a flaming nuclear goat and a personal thank you in the movie credits ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $100
  A signed print of a flaming nuclear goat paired with a signed print of a pig in a sailor suit, and a thank you in the movie credits ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $250
  An edition of the pre-production animation of when the super-computer falls in love with a mouse, a signed print of a flaming nuclear goat, and a thank you in the movie credits ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $500
  An edition of signed prints from the pre-production of the opening scenes, including the flaming nuclear goat, a pig in a sailor suit, a rat receiving brain surgery, a mouse falling in love with a supercomputer and a thank you in the movie credits ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $1000
  A copy of all the pre-production animations for the entire project (45 minutes), an invitation to a special afternoon at Slow Gallery to view the animations playing on the supercomputer set, and a thank you in the movie credits ($0.00 is tax deductible.)

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Meg Duguid

Meg Duguid believes that documentation is paramount to her art making and is invested in the ways that documentation and art can be integrated in a single practice. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of …

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