LOVE TEST: Cruising for a Bruising is a collaboration between artist Rosa Aiello and actor Dylan Aiello. Building on a lifelong creative partnership, the siblings stitch together film and live performance to stage the slippery dynamics of testing love, attention-seeking, and pushing past thresholds of social tolerance. These are actions to be treated without contempt: power plays in search of meaningful connection. This piece is made up of short comic routines, or “Lazzi”, performance units from Commedia dell’Arte theatre used to construct, break into, and unravel plots. Here they serve to destabilise the roles we take on as friends, family, professionals, lovers. LOVE TEST puts a spotlight on the urge to act, to control, to make something happen: it is a variety show, an ecstatic conversation, a road trip, a succession of interruptions, asking “Who is in charge?” Is it the one behind the camera, the one in front of the audience, the one driving, the one watching?

The performance features film footage by Laura Langer and filmed appearances by Laura Langer, Arianna Calgaro, Leslie Ewen, Victor Jacono, Maya Misfud, Tori Sasso-Briggs, Scarlett Stitt, and Katherine Ward.