random memory of the day

Site Specific Theatre. Coolest thing I did all summer.

It's theatre created around a specific location. The space dictating everything else--the script, for one.

One show was based on a rolling, hilly quad in the middle of campus. It became a commedia dell'arte piece with masks, houses, and a demon riding a golf cart.

One show was in a five-foot wide alleyway between the gym and the actual PE building. The alleyway was probably 75 feet long, with five doors on one side, a door and several windows on the other, and a ladder to the rooftop in back. The show turned into a freakshow, sort of. Hard to describe.

The third show was in a lobby with a spiral staircase, and the script was easily the best. It was a story about life expectations, placed in a hotel and written from a compilation of Langston Hughes' writing. It was beautiful.

These were full production. The techies shorted on nothing. There were full, elaborate lighting designs on all three sets--there were actual set pieces, where needed. There were full costumes, and there was real acting and direction. These were three works of art (quality to be determined by the audience member.) It was the location that made them, though, and made them exciting.

This should be done more often. Theatre should not be restrained to a black hole where we try to recreate the playwright's design. Theatre is a living, breathing thing, and if more people could invest in it in this way, it could really become alive. I've never experienced theatre in quite the same way--the summer wind was blowing through my hair as I stared at a high school kid in a commedia dell'arte mask declaring his love with a huge photographic projection playing on the brick wall of the building above and behind him. It was a hellalota work, but I can still feel the magic of that performance night.