Eephus Pitch
Alana Frey
Artist-in-Residence
February 28-March 14, 2022

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 directness, 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.”

Alana Frey is a Los Angeles-based performance maker and writer currently at work with dance improvisations, choreographies, sounding of voice, and written forms. She is a co-founder and emeritus editor of Riting.org, a platform for experiments in writing on performance happening now in Los Angeles. She also performs under the name de cherubim, a music project with Jamie Green, in which she moves while sounding high screams. She is currently working as Assistant Curator/Researcher on Knees, Schools, Urges, a forthcoming performative exhibition (June-July 2022) at the Box Gallery, curated by Jennie Liu and produced by Pieter Performance Space. 

Alana’s work has been presented in Los Angeles and the bay area at Pieter Performance Space, Dalton Warehouse, Electric Lodge, Human Resources, PAM Residencies, Oakland Secret, Pro Arts, and 2220 Arts & Archives (April 2022). 

Jamie Green is a musician and poet from Los Angeles who affectionately engages onerous perennialisms by the toil of metaphysical humour and disdain for academic gentility, struggling towards a transcension of comprehension. He operates besom presse, a publisher concerned with *perceptually activated* works.