Planning a Vacation From Myself. Checking Costs
Autobiographical Piece and Post Trauma

"A moment before he died, when I realized what was going to happen, I froze. Everything kept moving around me like in virtual reality, but I couldn’t do anything."
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Idit Herman’s partner for life and creation – Dima Tulpanov – passed away early and suddenly. The sudden loss burst the bubble that held Herman’s worldview and artistic beliefs and punctured the idea that art can save us.

The artist Oryan Yohanan poses the question: if life is fragile and bigger than art, how can the vacuum still be contained?

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Planning A Vacation from Myself. Checking Costs by Oryan Yohanan is a piece set inside the abyss that opens up at the moment of loss. The piece presents an unmasked, performative dialogue between Yohanan and her mentor Idit Herman, artistic director of Clipa Theater. Only now the tables are turned and Herman, who accompanied Yohanan as an artistic advisor in her previous pieces, now participates in the piece as matter at the hand of the creator.
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"Planning A Vacation from Myself. Checking Costs is a ‘non-play’ performance, allowing anger, boredom and pain to break into the scenario in favor of true emotions. It at times raises the hairs on the back of your neck and makes you shiver, or it can make the audience wait in complete emptiness"

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The work focuses on the void that opens up in the moment of trauma, in which it seems as if everything around you freezes and you are unable to move. “We are talking about a few seconds, but that kind of fall out of time breaks your world view by making you fall – almost physically – onto the infinite abyss in which we exist, and exposes the fragility of the membrane we call reality"