Theater for One

I had the oppor­tu­nity this past Thurs­day night to be the sole audi­ence mem­ber at a per­for­mance in The­ater for One. For those not famil­iar, the project is the brain­child of Chris­tine Jones, a free­lance set designer. There have been two pro­to­types to date. The cur­rent one, T41-2, was design by Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lig­nano of LOT-EK. The con­cept is sim­ple: there’s one per­former and one audi­ence mem­ber con­tained in a sin­gle space cre­ated from road box tech­nol­ogy used to safely cart sound and stage equip­ment between con­cert venues.

Pho­tog­ra­phy by Danny Bright

After hav­ing had my num­ber drawn for a chance to expe­ri­ence The­ater for One after the lec­ture at NYC Col­lege of Tech­nol­ogy, I was eager to see just how cool this could be. Sim­ple con­cepts often have pow­er­ful impacts, and well, The­ater for One cer­tainly has the poten­tial to fill the bill.  I say poten­tial only because what I expe­ri­enced was more of a demon­stra­tion rather than a seri­ous per­for­mance, but would I pay, even for a pricey ticket, for a sec­ond view­ing of a real pro­duc­tion? You bet!

Pho­tog­ra­phy by Danny Bright

I entered the box as I was directed and sat down in the chair.  Jones found some­one to donate an actual peepshow chair for the booth, a new one mind you!  It’s per­haps not a com­fort­able as one might would expect, but then again the per­for­mances are only 3 to 12 min­utes (even­tu­ally, Jones plans to do more full fea­ture length shows). The inte­rior is only tall enough to stand and is cov­ered in red quilted padding.  It really is like occu­py­ing the inside of a vio­lin case or a jew­elry box.  When you first enter, the audience’s side and the performer’s side of the box is sep­a­rated by a solid wall that is then slid out by a staff mem­ber to begin the per­for­mance, another node to the peepshow type expe­ri­ence I presume.

Pho­tog­ra­phy by Danny Bright

A young lady sat just on the other side and began a pre­tend per­for­mance on a tiny portable player piano. Keep in mind this was a demon­stra­tion. I smiled, and she smiled back. Awk­ward? Yes, a bit.  After a minute or so I couldn’t help myself  and just began to laugh out load.  This was a ridicu­lously delight­ful expe­ri­ence! The anonymity that audi­ence mem­ber usu­ally enjoys is com­pletely stripped away and one is forced to con­tend with the unavoid­able acknowl­edg­ment of the per­former as well as one’s own role in this highly con­cen­trated the­atri­cal reduc­tion. There’s no look­ing away, no day­dream­ing, no move­ment or sound gone unno­ticed, and no avoid­ance of what is hap­pen­ing at that moment.

As the wall slide back into place at the close of the demon­stra­tion, I clapped as I would nor­mally have. On the way back to my apart­ment, sit­ting on the sub­way across from another stranger, it occurred to me that The­ater for One really is unlike any other per­for­mance venue, but so much like many other social inter­ac­tions that we take for granted; the con­fes­sional, the post office win­dow, the bank teller, and the ticket win­dow.  I sus­pect it’s the con­tain­ment and pri­vacy that The­ater for One makes use of that allows this hyper con­scious experience.

I won­der what it’s like on the other side of the wall.

* The­atre for One has been invited by the Times Square Alliance for Pub­lic art to be installed in the heart of Times Square dur­ing a 10 day res­i­dency in May 2010. Check T41’s web­site out new information.