On Friday, October 6, 2026, Victoria Marks welcomed us to her show at CAP UCLA Nimoy Theatre telling us a bit about how it came to be. The whole thing started with a joke, or at least one of the only jokes she could remember as she is not a joke-telling person. This set up was the key to understanding and digesting all of the imagery and visual stimulus which followed. The piece was devised by Arletta Anderson, Rian Alcid, Maya Billig, Karen Chuang, Aaron Mason and Victoria Marks. It was performed by Rian Alcid, Maya Billig, Karen Chuang, Aaron Mason and Victoria Marks. This was a tightly knit group that produced a thought-provoking and at times devastating piece of theater for the consumption of the masses. Anchored in contemporary movement with great doses of gesture thrown in, it was deftly delivered by all involved.
Maya Billig, Karen Chuang, Rian Alcid, and Aaron Mason in “A Deer Walks Into a Dance”, Choreographed by Victoria Marks – Photo by Jason Williams, CAP UCLA.
So, the joke goes something like this: There is a King who loves to hunt. It is a fine sunny afternoon, and he goes hunting with his entourage and his dogs and his ministers. His dogs catch a scent and they tear off and corner something in a thicket. The thicket shakes and rattles as the dogs stand ready to pounce. The King lowers his rifle and aims at the thicket. Suddenly a man comes out with his hands up shaking and shouting “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I’m not a deer!” The King pulls the trigger and kills the man on the spot. The minister comes up to the King flustered and shocked saying “Sire! Why did you shoot that man?! He said he wasn’t a deer!” “Oh?” The King replies, “I thought he said he WAS a deer!” End of joke…. hold for laughs. Except…. This illustrates a rather nasty aspect of human behavior all too prevalent today. It also touches on a few other belief systems that are thankfully out-of-date in the modern world. Let us unpack this as best we can.
Rian Alcid, Aaron Mason, Maya Billig, and Karen Chuang in “A Deer Walks Into a Dance”, Choreographed by Victoria Marks – Photo by Jason Williams, CAP UCLA.
The immediate thing that struck me upon first hearing this joke was the divine right of kings – “a political and religious doctrine asserting that a monarch’s authority to rule comes directly from God rather than from the consent of the people, the aristocracy, or any earthly institution”(Wikipedia). It meant the king had no accountability for his actions as anything he did was justified directly by God. It required absolute obedience to the king, agreement to his actions, thoughts, fears, etc., and was considered a sin against God to reject or rebel against him. This doctrine held sway for a very long time and is even now being usurped by various dictatorship regimes in order to control and exploit the people under them. The King was not wrong for shooting the man even after he had surrendered with his empty hands in the air declaring “I am not a deer!”. The King cannot be wrong so the fault must lie with the man. The man should have spoken more clearly and loudly in order for the King to understand him. The blaming for this behavior can be seen throughout the entirety of human history. It also depicts “kowtowing” towards the King as his action cannot be condemned by those who witness it but only laughed at as a silly misunderstanding of a phrase. I believe everyone in the audience had ample examples of kowtowing from the daily barrage of news both national and international and could securely recognize how it could lead to such a horrifying circumstance. Thankfully, the divine right of kings seemed to dissolve with the onset of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, or maybe it just took on a different guise?
Rian Alcid in “A Deer Walks Into a Dance”, Choreographed by Victoria Marks – Photo by Jason Williams, CAP UCLA.
The performers go through various scenes of being the King in the joke, being the hunting dogs in the joke and even being the rifle in the joke. Curiously, when being the rifle or the gun in the joke, it is translated physically into a First Position Arabesque. I wonder – is it the strict, sometimes viewed as hard, technical requirements of classical ballet that lent itself to this definition in physical form? I would think the arabesque would better serve the hunting dogs than the rifle, but maybe I am confusing that with the pointer breed of hunting dog? At any rate, the dog section was quite entertaining as the performers spoke volumes in barking like dogs while the translation of what they were saying was displayed on the backdrop of the stage. Clever, and very funny.
And speaking of words and what they mean, there was a section where phrases having to do with death and dying were shown while the dancers illuminated these phrases physically. “You are killing it!”, “Knock’em dead!” and “Slay!”, which was my favorite as one of the performers slips into a sassy Drag persona to walk down center stage as if at fashion week in Milan – Fabulous! All of the phrases are positive exclamations of something good while utilizing declarations of death. These examples show how attentive one must be when listening to another person talk about or describe anything.
Karen Chuang, Aaron Mason, Rian Alcid (center), and Maya Billig in “A Deer Walks Into a Dance”, Choreographed by Victoria Marks – Photo by Jason Williams, CAP UCLA.
The joke is a pointed comment on mistaken identity. From the program notes by Marks: “(It is)… a deadly case of mistaken identity, How a person identifies themselves, and how others identify them – whether they are moving across borders or on their way home has everything to do with their survival”. It is a deadly case of mistaken self-identity, which opens the whole of it to a greater horror than before. We have I.C.E. identifying “immigrants” and transporting them to a detention camp in Florida whether they are illegal or not. Children separated from parents posing no obvious threat and the agents acting overall as if the divine right of kings was theirs to flaunt. October 12th was the anniversary of the death of Matthew Sheppard who was killed in 1998 for self-identifying as gay. At one point in the show Marks, through her role as joke teller, comments and says she didn’t know that words could kill. She ends her story with the question: “Well, was he a deer or wasn’t he a deer? Now we’ll never know!”. Because he is dead. This was a chilling observation by the character and said much about today’s struggles of various peoples and groups trying to assimilate into any society. There were sections of the piece when pronouns were projected upon the back wall attaching the action to those forms of self-identification. For me it created a tsunami of recent news headlines of hate crimes, bullying, teen suicide, school shootings, etc. – and to write etcetera after that list speaks volumes.
Marks work with this group was savvy, smart, well-executed and thought provoking. Everything the theater is meant for and can do for its audience. The themes, although serious and cutting to the very core of certain tribal instincts of human society, were wrapped in movement and physical form at once entertaining, delightful and even funny. It was a subversive commentary on politics, social standing and ethical mores and served as a chilling satire on human behavior.
Original music composed by Simon Chernow with costumes by Ravi Ranawaka, lighting by Katelan Braymer.
To learn more about the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, please visit their website.
Written by Brian Fretté for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: Karen Chuang and Maya Billig in “A Deer Walks Into a Dance”, Choreographed by Victoria Marks – Photo by Jason Williams, CAP UCLA.
