All The World's a Stage

These artists put their shows in weird places. Weirdness ensues.

by Deni Kasrel

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Published: Aug 27, 2008

"The aura of the setting makes the performance unique," says Gwen Kaminski, director of Spoon River Anthology: Performed by the Light of a Setting Sun. The show takes place at a graveyard. Yeah, I'd call that unique.

Lisa Rastl Bodies in Urban Spaces

Of course, off-the-beaten-path venues are a tradition for the Live Arts/Fringe festival, but this year is next level. More artists are opting for site-specific performance, where the environs add considerable character and ambience to a production. Locales include a skate park (Oedipus at FDR); a vacant lot (Beyond the Pale); Philadelphia's Magic Gardens (tide); a street corner (South Philly Neighborhood Adventure Tours/Part 1); a coffee shop (Etiquette); fire escapes, office buildings and assorted other Center City stops (Bodies in Urban Spaces); Christ Church Neighborhood House (Wandering Alice); as well as a former church (Urban ECHO: Circle Told) and a parking garage (Car), both in West Philly.

The site for Spoon River Anthology could hardly be more specific — it's based on a book, circa 1915, by Edgar Lee Masters, wherein people interred in a burial ground speak from beyond the grave. "The book is kind of a commentary on small-town life and the scandals that went on in Masters' own community," explains Kaminski. Laurel Hill is a historic cemetery dating to the Victorian era, a time when grave markers, especially those for the wealthy, often included large sculptural elements. Kaminski says the scenario makes for "a very sensational experience.

"The audience is sitting on the same earth where people and their stories lie buried beneath. Obviously, we don't need props — we have everything there for us already. ... It adds a reality to the stories that you couldn't find elsewhere."

Likewise, the site of Kate Watson-Wallace/Anonymous Bodies' mostly-sold-out Car is rooted in reality; it's a parking garage. The performance occurs in, on and around an automobile, which is at times moving, and, with room for one in the front and three in the back seat, allows only for an audience of four. That level of intimacy is one reason Watson-Wallace is so enamored of site-specific performance (for Live Arts 2006, she presented House, which led an audience of 15 through a West Philly rowhome). "I'm interested in making work where you get to see it up close ... and that's easier to do when you're not in a theater," she says. Watson-Wallace is also jazzed by the notion that in a parking garage there's always room for "this surprise audience, and they're actually performers and spectators at the same time. If you have to get your car out of the lot, you're in the piece."

That's part of the excitement of putting art in unconventional spaces — you have to have a plan for the unplanned.

"We're discussing what we're going to do if it rains," says Liz Zimmerman of Soundwalk Philadelphia, which presents Beyond the Pale, where show-goers don headphones to listen to an audio track that guides them through a performance at an abandoned lot in Fishtown. The piece aims to address issues concerning technology, urbanization and isolation, and Zimmerman asserts that rather than create a wash-out, rain could add a nifty twist. "We're talking about giving everyone umbrellas — performers and audience members. Then someone is confronted with, 'Gee, do I really want to walk through the mud and experience this?' But that is also part of the urban experience."

Kelly Turner Tide

External and internal elements strongly influenced Leah Stein's Urban ECHO: Circle Told, where her company of eight dancers and nearly 100 singers of the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia stage an abstract exploration of sound and movement at the Rotunda, in University City. This high-domed multilevel structure is "sonically brilliant," says Stein, in addition to offering a stimulating playground for the performers. "A lot of what we're doing is almost like the visualizing of soundwaves." Although Urban ECHO happens indoors, Stein, who is well-known for her outdoor site-specific work, has found ways to let the outside in. Performances are purposefully scheduled during the daytime to take advantage of how the space is highlighted when sunbeams stream through the Rotunda's decorative windows. And during the day, she enthuses, street life in the area is vibrant and "that drifts in and joins us to inevitably become part of the piece ... I love that interplay."

Nichole Canuso was also seeking interplay, albeit of a different kind, when she decided to stage Wandering Alice in Christ Church Neighborhood House. Her "roaming performance installation," partially inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, unfolds on two floors of the building as well as in the stairwell. "I really wanted the audience to feel viscerally the act of traveling and discovery the way the characters are in the piece," she says. "It seemed less exciting to have [the performers] on a stage. I wanted to put the audience inside a world for them to walk through." Moreover, in certain sections of Wandering Alice, the audience interacts with the cast, up close and personal, which, Canuso believes, better "puts them inside the journey."

Clearly, adopting a site-specific approach can broaden the scope of what is possible in performance in a multitude of ways. Regardless of the location, indoors or out, all of these artists seek to create an experience that cannot happen in a conventional theater. Many do so out of a desire to alter the dynamic between audience and performer. Another common goal is to change people's perceptions on any number of levels. For Jacelyn Biondo, half of the creative team behind React/Dance's South Philly Neighborhood Adventure Tours/Part 1, that can be a reason for staging an event at a seemingly dodgy city intersection. "One of the things we've been playing with is the question of where art exists," she says.

(deni.kasrel@citypaper.net)

Visit livearts-fringe.org for showtimes.

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