Theater | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: People missed a lot of things during the pandemic. One thing they most likely didn't miss was the uncomfortable, forced interactions that come with big gatherings like weddings. The Big Storm Performance Company will explore this with a new show based on some of the creators' real-life experiences.
4 comments:
This article is my first time hearing about Big Storm Performance Company, and they seem like a really interesting company! They were founded very recently, and haven’t done a lot of shows yet. It takes gall and artistic determination to found a theater company during a pandemic and do new work immediately, but Big Storm Performance Company is doing just that. “Or Forever Hold Your Peace” is a super intriguing work. I can’t say I’ve attended a ton of weddings, but like most people, I’ve seen my share, and it’s a frame that allows for a lot of comedy, romance, drama, and dance. In other words, a perfect theatrical set-up. I’m excited to see how the production draws upon the too familiar emotion of a painful wedding to create a new theatrical experience. Upon googling, I also discovered that tickets are free! I will definitely be going to check it out for myself.
As someone who struggles with social anxiety, uncomfortable, forced interactions are the bane of my existence. The Big Storm Performance Company explores these social interactions, lost to the pandemic, that we've certainly not been missing, through their piece Or Forever Hold Your Peace. Co-founder and artistic director, José Pérez IV mentioned a conversation at a wedding, where a man said, "‘Hey, you’re like one out of two people here who aren’t white! Wow. Does that ever make you uncomfortable? Being such a minority like that?’". I can confirm that there are certain settings where comments like that are prevalent–family gatherings and weddings being two of them that I recall. This 'theatre experience' is a modern, physical, fun, and relatively short piece, and I think there is charm in that, especially because it is still a challenge of the more traditional theatre experience.
This sounds like an absolutely fantastic production and I want to see it so badly! One of the qualities a good writer has is to point out the ridiculous in the mundane: something many comedians do well, so I am excited to see it onstage. Also the wacky personalities and overall odd social circumstances weddings seem like the perfect combination for theatrical comedy. I also love that it is pushing past the traditional play versus musical category. Immersive theatre is becoming more and more popular which is great, but I am interested in seeing what other types of theatrical productions are out there. It’s a bit weird experiencing a piece set in a time period I lived through and can remember. I can’t imagine what it would be like to watcha production of this show done in another 20 to 30 years and see how future designers and actors interpret the time period.
Well damn, I wish I had the time to go see this, this sounds like an absolute joy of a time. As I'm sure any single one of us who has been to a wedding can confirm, they run the range of being horribly boring affairs to some of the wildest, social-anxiety inducing events you've ever been to. It feels like weddings just turn off people's common sense in social situations too, like the comment made to the director about being one of two non-white people at a wedding. Comments like that feel like they're straight out of a satire, but boy howdy are they exceedingly common at these big social events.
It's also pretty interesting to see how the directing team is loosely playing with the definition of a play with this piece and considering it more of a theatre experience. That's one of the things that I love about modern theatre, that it's very much not constrained by any kind of boundary or restriction to type, it can just be whatever it wants within scope.
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