World Series

Description:

World Series was a multimedia performance by Anna Banana, co-written and performed with Ron Brunette, that used satire to critique consumerism, corporate greed, and the environmental impacts of modern industry. Emerging from anxieties about the erosion of agency and free will under capitalism, the work unfolded as a rapid-fire sequence of surreal skits—like flipping channels on television—with Banana and Brunette shifting characters, costumes, and sets at dizzying speed.

The piece opens with a mock therapy session in which Banana and Brunette smashed an upholstered form with a baseball bat, venting rage against a world in crisis. The two then staged a parody “think tank” of the Atomic Energy Commission, exposing the hypocrisy of attempts to save the world while shielding extractive industries. Donning fat suits, Banana and Brunette played couch potatoes binge-watching baseball—a caricature of gluttony and passive consumption.

In the climactic skit, Banana and Brunette were wed by a wooden cow whose spots were painted to spell “GNP” for Gross National Product. A pre-recorded voice guided them through a ceremony that involved lighting candles for increased earnings, honour of debts, and obedience to consumption, while a ring from the cow’s teat sealed their union—not only to each other, but to the cow itself, symbolizing devotion to growth at all costs. They exited the stage as Pink Floyd’s “Money” (1973) played.

The scenes that followed critiqued the commodification of health, wellness, and bodily autonomy; the environmental consequences of consumer products such as sunscreen, single-use plastics, and cigarettes; and the influence of mass media and propaganda on independent thought. Featuring slides, voiceover narration, and original songs, World Series played hardball with the ideology of exponential growth—turning America’s pastime into a metaphor for complicity, contradiction, and unchecked desires.

Video documentation is available upon request.