Foundry Theatre Proposal
Jason Grote
Attached please find a tentative rehearsal and organization schedule
to be discussed at tomorrow's meeting, and a description of the
process. Once we can agree on the general parameters, Maureen or I
will distribute paper copies of this. It's a bit long, so I'll also be
going over it at the meeting tomorrow.
First, the proposed schedule:
Sunday, April 17 (both Maureen and Jason are scheduled to travel for
work this day -- Maureen is trying to change her flight; would Monday
the 18th be possible?)
Thursday, April 21
Sunday, April 24: (EASTER - do people have commitments? Should we
schedule an alternate date?), Community Workshop Day
Thursday, April 28
Sunday, May 1: Community Workshop Day
Thursday, May 5
Sunday, May 8: Community Workshop Day
Monday, May 9
Tuesday, May 10
Wednesday, May 11
Thursday, May 12
Friday, May 13
Saturday, May 14: PERFORMANCE
Sunday, May 15: PERFORMANCE
"Community workshop days" are big art-making days to make banners,
costumes, etc. and/or do any temporary installations we decide on
(like banner-hanging or speakers for fixed sound stations). We’re
shooting for a dozen main rehearsals with little offshoots and
take-home work during the in-between time. For all the main
rehearsals, lets discuss what time of day
would be best for our core group. Thursday and Sunday is the schedule
suggested by the Foundry, though we can do Saturday/Sunday (or
something else entirely) if that makes more sense.
Project description:
EMERGENCE will be an ambulatory installation piece occurring at the
Green Oasis garden, to be performed on two consecutive days, about an
hour or two in duration. The piece will involve music, dance,
performance, visual art, and possibly pre-recorded audio pieces to be
piped in through speakers or played on portable audio devices.
Audience members will engage with the event at their own pace, led by
a map or possibly a scavenger hunt (though the hunt will be for
experiences rather than objects). There might also be an element of
pageantry, with audience guided through the garden by costumed
gardeners and/or neighborhood kids.
Separate groups (a music group, an art group, etc.) will each be in
charge of their own component and work independently at will, and
Maureen and Jason will help assemble each group into a coherent whole
in the week leading up to the "performance."
The guiding metaphor for both the creation and the content of the
piece is emergence. Over the course of our interactions with the
garden membership, we’ve noticed that creative projects here operate
in a specific, consistent, organic, and non-hierarchical way: a
gardener will start a project (e.g., the stone patio in the center of
the garden); that garden member will be the lead on that project,
though not exclusively, and other gardeners will help, offer input,
argue, or opt out as needed. Spatially, this is reflected in the
garden’s built structures, like the gazebo, the koi pond, the
beehives, and so on. Taken as a whole, the architecture of the garden
is beautiful, but individual structures are messy and uneven, in
defiance to the hard right angles of the surrounding buildings and the
grid structure of Manhattan. This is our guiding principle, and our
alternate vision of “NYC… Just Like [We] Pictured It.” As the artist
Steve Lambert puts it, utopia is not a destination but a direction.
In practical terms, what will be happening in the garden will depend
on what you, the gardeners, decide to do. We've figured out a few
rough categories that you can sign up for, which will mostly act
independently of one another, and in the final week, Maureen and I
will coordinate all of the moving parts. We will also be having a few
works days, in which garden members and neighborhood kids will be
invited to make and build stuff ranging from banners to costumes to
even more ambitious structures if there is time, will, and budget.
Some suggestions follow, but we are open to suggestions, and the piece
is designed to be very flexible and accommodate almost anything within
reason.
-One idea would be to create small temporary plaques for plants and
built structures in the garden, like they have at botanical
gardens—but instead of (or in addition to) scientific info about the
plants, we would include personal history about the garden that we get
from the interviews—or information about the site of the garden
(formerly a tenement, later a vacant lot) that we get from the NYC
Municipal Archives. We’re fascinated by the idea or a palimpsest—as
Luc Sante has said, New York is a city that is always being built on
top of another city. Underneath the garden there is rumored to be an
old basement from the tenement that once stood there, and we’re really
fascinated by that idea, and the idea of “air rights;” the idea of New
York as a vertical city.
-The scavenger hunt would be geared towards people having alternative
experiences, use all the five senses, and emphasize the notion of
having a different experience of the city; tasting honey from the
garden, say, or sitting in silence in the shade of a particular tree,
or contemplating, the way one does walking through a labyrinth.
-We’d like to have an information booth, maybe built to look like one
of those old-time robot fortune tellers, where audience can ask
questions about garden history (or anything else). It would be
staffed by a gardener. We also like how gardeners who have been
members for a very long time argue about historical details, so maybe
it could be something like the booth of disputed history (but with a
better name).
-A dance, choreographed by Maryanne, with one of the local children (a
nine-year-old girl who is also a dancer). In general we’d like to
involve as many kids as possible.
-There is a large raised platform that was formerly used to store
honey (now it’s not used for anything); we’d like to station musicians
(from the garden membership) on top of it.
-The garden does many kid-friendly group activities, like
costume-making or pumpkin-carving—we’d like to incorporate this
somehow, maybe bringing a lot of stuff from materials for the arts and
making costumes for a pageant or otherwise decorating the garden for
the event.
-I like the idea of a confession box—a place for people to write
anonymous messages and put them in a box, like a suggestion box—then
we would make something out of them. Not sure what.
And, finally, committee sign-ups:
REHEARSAL GROUPS
(please sign up for one or more of these areas)
Musicians
Live musicians are going to be a key part of this performance and we
would like to get all or most of them from within the Green Oasis
community. Some will need to be present at all rehearsals, others we
can send off to learn songs and then plug them in.
Dancers
If possible, we would love for Marianne to be a leader of this group.
Our dream would be a duet between Marianne and Marta. But, we could
also envision a bunch of little girls dancing that Marianne
choreographs, if that’s her preference.
Visual Art Makers
This group can start the core of its work around the Community Workshop days.
If you consider yourself more of a builder or a designer, this is a
great place for you to contribute.
Miscellaneous Scavenger Hunt Crew
We would love to have a few of you sign up to be a part of our
‘Disputed History Booth’. This will probably fall somewhere between a
fortune tellers booth and a lemonade stand.
There will also be lots of other opportunities as we find, together,
what all the stops on the scavenger hunt will be. Bee keepers
definitely welcome in this area.