Some notes... Actual description coming soon...

 

The prop room is loaded floor to ceiling with objects, mostly dusty and old. These objects have an imagined history as symbols in the theater and a real history as objects. The theater is often an empty room. Anything placed within it is loaded with significance, chosen with intention. When the room is crowded with objects from floor to ceiling, they similarly disappear into the background. Stuff becomes space and must be highlighted to enter the scene. The density of objects is as our density of stories and experiences as individuals. Object upon object is pulled from hiding into the action from plain view. The revelation of object and the use of changing light from inside the set creates a constant shifting of the architecture of these collected stories/objects. The piece is lit from inside the set with lamps, the static of television screens, a microwave oven, and flashlights. With each change of light a new section of the room is revealed.

 

In the live piece we engaged all of the audiences senses. Sound: the pouring of water, the microwave. Music from an old radio. Smell: The rat shit and dust. Sweetening the air by heating vanilla water in the microwave. Taste: cake and cookies. The challenge of video will be to bring these sense experiences to the audience through the visual alone. Perhaps I will present the video in an installation environment using some of the highlighted objects.

 

The action of the two performers/characters is simple. They start separated in a shared space (at opposite ends of a long aisle). Pulling a tea set from a suitcase. Drinking tea. Coming together. Washing each others hands. Playing the music. A precarious counterbalance atop a small chair. A cake is pulled from another suitcase. We eat. Departure. The preciousness of human contact in a world towering with stuff.