It was pretty interesting thinking about how I ran concessions through the kitchen and greeted every audience member and asked them about how they wanted their tea. It was something that I hadn’t seen done at a show before. The team also wanted to experiment with a show that doesn’t have formal announcements saying when the show begins and ends and I think that matches our intention of experimenting with how we want to treat our audiences and relate to them during our time together and when is it “performance.” I enjoyed the audience interaction and I think without that initial rolesetting as showrunner and audience, our guests felt a bit more at ease in interacting with us and the environment.

One of the features of the show was the amount of props. I would say that this show had the most props of any of our shows. We established the concept of “authentic bringing” and it was the idea that we could bring different things to play with that we might have brought or not to rehearsals. Bells, twine, a typewriter, a hundred of gold felt petals, tape, paper, gum, pens, pinecone, fabric, overhead projector, colored cellophane, a wig, a basket of percussion instruments, paper bags, a hundred of bar soaps, fennel… Next time, I’ll definitely be doing more documentation.

During the show and after, I felt that things happened that I didn’t like and that I liked that. It was interesting to think about because the way the experiment was designed to be whatever it was, I think that the pros outweigh the cons and it’s all learning and interesting. I know that the first time doing something is always quite special and then trying to recreate it feels a bit canned. The new wonder of what could happen with a couple of hours and some really curious people.

It was interesting feeling people make choices that made me feel self-conscious– I’m not a big fan of art wanting to call attention to the question of is what the audience is watching “art.” I feel like I’ve gone through a lot of phases in metabolizing this question and I much rather avoid it now, but I can appreciate that an inquiry that came up during our rehearsals was “would people want to watch this?” I think it’s an interesting thing because I much rather be a part of it and understand more about what we are doing then to look at it from the outside in a limited slice. I think that for something this gooey and unpredictable, we felt like we were making promises that were not a guarantee.

A thing to also note is that one of our number wasn’t able to make the show due to illness, so in some ways, the event couldn’t be what we hoped. The format is amorphous, readjusting to the space, time, and people present. That’s one thing that I really enjoy about these kinds of shows is that it was what it was and it celebrates that there’s no wrong way to approach the task of engagement.