Theatre Development Fund – TDF: This week, TDF Stages Editor Raven Snook geeks out (via Facebook Messenger) with Juan Michael Porter II, a dancer, teacher and playwright who's contributed articles to Time Out New York, Broadway World, HuffPost and TDF Stages.
Today's topic: The coolest site-specific revivals we've seen, wish we'd seen or would like to see!
3 comments:
This is really interesting. I think site-specific theatre can be very evocative. Especially with dramas, historic pieces, or pieces based on true stories. It is one thing to attempt to place the audience in a world, in a specific place and time. But to have the audience actually be in the space is probably a game changer and it must really stir up emotions within them as they are connected to the story being told in a physical way. Moreso, reviving shows in this was is an interesting twist on retelling stories that have been told many times. This may be better than many of the avant-garde ideas that people have come up with because of the deeper connection that it creates. It brings another layer to the story that many people may not have been aware of and they may be able to see it in a newer light. However, I think it is much more complicated or tricky to do site-specific theatre than it sounds. For one, it probably won't be as technical as some people are accustomed to. Creative and production teams will have to be willing to sacrifice and work around a lot. There will probably also be lots of restraints and hard-to-solve (or even impossible-to-solve) problems that never come up in the theater. So though this sounds simple, it is not.
Site specific theatre makes me my TD mind race. In so many of the locations listed in this article – a barge, a pool, funeral home, petting zoo, loft, soup kitchen – there are so many additional factors you have to consider when putting up a performance in a venue not made for performance, like Apriah mentions. The first consideration that comes to mind is configuring the seating for the audience, and making sure that the seating meets OSHA and egress rules and regulations. You also have to take into consideration whether or not the venue itself is structural sound enough to hold the capacity of an audience and scenery. With a location that is not a performance or presentation venue, you also have to consider the departments outside of scenery. Like Raven Snook mentions, you have to consider acoustics and bringing in sound equipment, and the infrastructure needed to theatrically (or even just practically) light the performance. Does the alternative venue have the structures for lighting and sound equipment, or with structures need to be created for that as well? I think Juan Micheal’s closing point is incredibly important when thinking about site specific theatre: the location has to be essential to the storytelling of the piece for the alternate location to be worth it.
I remember the first time I heard of site-specific theatre. I was sitting with my high school director and we were supposed to be going over the set designs for a show I was about to be TD-ing. But we got off on a tangent and he began telling me about his favorite theatre experiences. One of them was a site-specific show that took place in the back of an almost pitch-black moving semi-truck with all of the audience members and actors crunched together with barely any space to breathe. The show was about how it felt to illegally immigrate to the U.S. and honestly, I can't think of any more powerful way to convey that feeling than what he described to me. He explained what it was like feeling the anxiety of being in that environment. Being able to smell the fear and the sweat of the people surrounding him. Even the harsh and abusive ways the actors playing the role of coyotes (people that smuggle others over the border {usually with gang affiliation}) treated the men, women, and children that just wanted to find a safe place to exist. Theatre has the power to expose people to things they could never imagine and it also has the power to change a person's entire worldview. Anyone that doubts that has never seen good theatre.
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