Wednesday, March 18, 2026
What Do Indie Bookstores and Off-Broadway Theater Have in Common?
The Hat: One of the 27 objects in Ed Schmidt’s interactive one-person play Edward, now playing at bookstores around New York, is a beat-up copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Edward, whose life is narrated through a series of his belongings, was a high-school English teacher. Over the course of the evening, several objects — an Arthur Miller playbill, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a hotel ashtray — demonstrate, in his words, “the vital role that reading literature plays in the development of a well-rounded life.”
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2 comments:
This is such an interesting and cool way to stage something! I’ve never seen any kind of production that was as site-specific as this. I have to wonder how producers go about asking how to stage this show in independently owned bookstores. This kind of staging almost reminds me of a TV show in the sense that the actors are in a more accurate recreation of a space, because movie sets tend to be more literal than theatre sets. This almost feels like a movie you are literally an extra in, except not because it’s theatres. I find it interesting that despite how site specific this production is, it’s not explicitly tied to bookstores and could be staged outside of a bookstore. The location of the set adds to the story, but it does not make it up entirely. Seeing the set for The Bookstore gives such a different experience compared to if it was staged inside an actual bookstore.
This article was so interesting, and the connectin it makes between bookstores and theaters is not something I had really thought about before, so it was cool that it made me think about how they relate to each other. I love forms of theater that are different than the traditional ways that theater is produced and interactive theater is one of my favorite alternative forms of theatre. I think that staging an interactive show inside of a books store is so freaking awesome. The fact that the story of this show revolves around objects from throughout the main characters life is awesome and such an interesting way of telling a story. The setting of a bookstore is perfect because many of these objects are infact books and also this character is an english teacher which adds a layer to the story. I’d love an opportunity to see more theater like this its so interesting and has so much potential.
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