Theaterspeak: Perched on a corner of the Starbucks and Gap-riddled streets of the Upper West Side, AliveWire has poked into the forgotten rooms of the West Park Presbyterian Church to present You Will Make a Difference. The building, so easy to pass on a morning commute without a thought, is in actuality a labyrinth of strangely mismatched rooms and levels, creating the stage for a unique theatrical experience.
I won’t give away the surprises, but do go in with open mind and a willingness to immerse yourself in the experience. It left me with much to reflect on, so I posed a few questions to some of the key players in the creation of You Will Make a Difference: Creator/Director Jeremy Goren, Co-fonder/Producer Chana Porter, and Director of Development/Producer Eric Borlaug.
2 comments:
The NFTRW blog has brought to my attention the slow shift in the theatre world to interactive pieces, e.g. You Will Make a Difference and Sleep No More. I'm excited. It feels like, as a theatre artist studying my craft in 2012, I'm on the cusp of a new movement in the theatre/media/entertainment industry that's truly exciting to me.
I don't think (nor do I hope) that this style of theatre will replace "traditional" theatre experiences entirely. Rather, I think (and hope) that this will expand into a separate genre of theatre, much like musical theatre, musical comedy, and "the concept play" have in the past.
What an exciting time to be making a foray into the industry.
Typically in theatre designers create a space for actors. Even in places we find we change furniture and add and subtract what we want the room to feel like. When they are describing their space for the performance it does not sound like they are doing that. The article makes the building seems as if that it was stumbled upon and not changed. This difference makes me believe that this is truly approaching new types of performance art. When I go to theatre I don't remember the the building I remember the performance so to have a performance where the building is just as important forces me to much more alert. It is an interesting way to change theatre, I would have never guessed changing the space could dramatically change performance.
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