As a title, "Asylum — 24·11·09 — Rebel Rhyder: 'Not Done Yet' (Exclusive)" resists tidy summary. It suggests a dossier, a dispatch, a headline, and a personal testament all at once. It insists that dates matter like scars, that names are both armor and accusation, and that "exclusive" can be reclaimed from commerce to mean "intensely, dangerously particular."
The performance that night was branded "Not Done Yet"—a phrase scaffolding the set list, the decor, the confrontations. The opening lines were almost bored in their repetition: fragments of news reports, clipped voicemail, a children's rhyme retooled into a taunt. Yet the repetition served like a drumbeat: the dulling of language until it flashed with new intent. Projected behind Rhyder, a rotating slideshow stitched newspapers and personal photos, documents and graffiti—evidence of fights won and lost, of small betrayals recorded in marginalia. assylum 24 11 09 rebel rhyder ass not done yet exclusive
"Exclusive" was less about scarcity and more about permission: to see what is ordinarily veiled. Rhyder's intimacy was surgical. Audience members found themselves complicit in private interrogations made public: a whispered confession amplified; an embroidered family portrait re-captioned; a white envelope passed through the crowd that contained nothing and everything—a list of grievances, a recipe, an apology, a map with one route scratched out. As a title, "Asylum — 24·11·09 — Rebel
There was humor—dry, corrosive—and then a tenderness that punctured the sarcasm. Rhyder indicted public institutions and private cowardice with the same economy of gesture. He could turn a bureaucratic form into a love poem and a ransom note into a civic lesson. The performance moved like a court of small claims, adjudicating slights, while insisting that theater itself was a form of asylum: a place to try on identities, to plead, to be heard. The opening lines were almost bored in their