An Explanation (In Part)

This play, I Meant to Build A House, grew out of a collaboration between 2 architects and a playwright.

This play is a work – the first – of Studio TRIMTAB, a collective of artists who believe in working on projects that transcend disciplinary boundaries and that respond to Buckminster Fuller’s vision of social action:

“Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me Trim Tab.”

For our first project, we wanted to create a piece that explored this concept – the individual as a trim tab. (How better to start, than with a self-examination, right?) We wanted to create an experience that explored the facets of individuality, individual experience, memory, helplessness and agency, walls and threshold and doors. An experience that empowered the audience as participants, builders, creators, movers and shakers. A play by the audience for the audience – or as much as any curated experience can be.

A play at the micro-level.

We started out with this premise – that we wanted to create a microplay for a microstructure for a microaudience. All of these things were to be developed simultaneously and organically. We called the idea 4:2 (for two) because we wanted the play and the space to be perfect for two people to share an intensely personal moment.

A play for the individual.

We agreed that each individual’s experience of the play must be unique, a moment that will not be replicated or shared by anyone else, but that it needs to be a part of a collective engagement.

We agreed that the play must be reproducible, but that each iteration must be unique to its context, its space, it audience.

We agreed that there should be a single performer.

A space for the individual.

It must be16x32 or smaller. It must be built within a larger structure, designed specifically for that space, and intrinsically attached to that space.

The audience must move through it, one at a time.

It must have walls and thresholds, opacity and translucence, light and shadows.

It must be enjoyed from the inside and the outside, as a functional space and as an object of beauty. 

What a weekend

We had an extremely productive weekend!

Sam and his girlfriend Heili came in on Thursday evening of last week, staying with us until Monday morning for what was our best weekend yet. We also had surprise guests from Toledo with my brother Markus Beck and Meri Mullins sharing in the festivities.

On Friday of last week we hosted a sort of brainstorming, writing charrette to get some "narrative clarity" (as Owen puts it). We collected 50 random objects from around the house and from local thrift stores, building a collection of things ranging from an antique perfume bottle to an old baseball glove.

The idea behind the objects, and the narrative theme we are working with is the idea of "memories being tied to objects; the objects acting as relics of past experiences." 

At the event we hosted on Friday night, we displayed the 50 objects in our foyer, along with a piece of paper. Guests were asked to choose an object, pick up a piece of paper and writing utensil, and move in to the kitchen. 

Each piece of paper had a set of loose instructions:

"describe your object; your object is a memory; your object is the threshold of a story; describe your memory"

The guests responded to these directions in the kitchen and wrote approximately 5 sentences each about each object.

We curated the event by hanging a grid of strings, with clothespins attached at the end, from the ceilings of our kitchen and living room. The writings were held at about head-height in both rooms for people to read and discuss the various writings, which created an awesome atmosphere.

Saturday morning we read through and discussed the writings everyone had done. Moving forward, the various responses will serve as a starting point for Sam, the playwright, to respond to in creating the 50 scenes we will have for the production. 

Here is what we have established so far:

The narrative will focus around a singular actor/actress

The audience members will enter the theater space, and through a series of ritualistic stages, will be given an object, which they will carry with them through the space, finally exchanging the object for a 2 min, one-on-one interaction with the actor/actress within an intimate space that we are referring to as the "memory box." 

The different objects will each act as cues to their respective scenes, 50 objects/scenes in total. Each object will reference a different scene, keeping each audience member's experience unique to any others. 

The hope is that upon exiting the "experience," the audience members will mingle and share their experiences with one another, forming a loose narrative of the character's life

We were also able to take Sam into the warehouse space we will be using to host the event, and were able to make a ton of progress and now have a strong sense of the general layout of the space for the production.

We developed the floor plan of the spaces, taping it out in the warehouse last night.

The taping-out was really good, with the design/build process working for us, evolving and problem solving in the space in real time!

The rest of this week we will be acquiring wood and fabric materials for the construction, so that we are able to test and experiment with the actual materials in the actual space.

Here are some photos from Friday for your viewing pleasure!  Also if any of you out there in blog land have photos of the event, please email them to us!

Things I Need to Read/Research

I am currently rereading The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin because one of the ways I write is by creating a web of intersecting, contiguous or vaguely related research. Something along the lines of: 

"This play deals with mechanical reproduced objects! = The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction! = the play is created for reproduction! = the process of reproduction is Act 1 of the play! = Sol Lewitt Wall Drawings!"

During a similar train of thought I realized that if I were to do this project justice I would read/research the following:

1. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (seven volumes)

2. Theatre for One

3. The Conventions of Cartography by David Hancock

I will let you know how that goes.

Scrap #1

Here is Scrap #1 of some of the exploratory writing I did at the beginning of the process: 

The front door opens onto a hallway, which leads to another hallway and another, which leads into another, slightly smaller hallway and another, each a fractal piece of the last. And the pattern continues with minor irregularities - elevators and stairwells - channeling into smaller and smaller spaces until finally all of it spills onto the parquet floor of my apartment.

And

The first days I’m there I get lost a lot.

The first years I’m there I get lost a lot.

I walk in the front door, which creeks like an old man sitting down slowly, and I look up into the hallway, up through the hallway towards the elevator doors – two for twenty floors

The floor is marble - black and white tiles - and just recently polished because I shift my foot to adjust the load of moving boxes balanced against my hip and my sneakers squeak against the step and I think the sound is going to echo up and down the cavernous hallway but instead it’s stifled, swallowed up by the space, instantly split apart into smaller and smaller bits until nothing remains.

The boxes are heavy and my arms hurt and my chest is tight because I already know that I have too many things too much junk to fit in my tiny studio and I’m going to have to throw something away.

My arms hurt and my chest is tight because I know already and I knew it before. I knew it when I signed the lease and I knew it when I was packing and I knew it when I was putting things in the car and I knew it when I was driving over and parking and unloading

But I couldn’t decide

I laid everything out like a guillotine queue shuffling towards the big industrial trash bags

But instead I packed everything into boxes and hoped that neglect and attrition would do the job I couldn’t.

Smiljan Radic_Casa Habitación

Casa Habitacion, designed by Smiljan Radic, a Chilean architect of Croatian descent, has served as good reference for our efforts. The small cabin is envisioned as a “storehouse of experience.” A wooden framework forms the structure of the space that is transparent to its surroundings. The elegance of the structure is apparent in its honesty and clarity. The pockets of spaces created are intended to be filled with the contents of the inhabitants, referred to as the textures of our lives, the bonds that are formed between experience and objects. In the cabin, objects are displayed, they form the space. The objects are relics of memories, a theme prevalent to our exploration of the narrative being written. 

Local vs absolute axiality

There are a lot of different ways to explore sequence, order and placement of spaces.  For this project we are going with local axiality,  this means that the spatial organization will be developed with each space’s orientation and focus derived from internal motivations rather than a external system.  This might not make a lot of sense.  So here is an example: Forbidden City china: everything is based on one super imposed axis and everything from there on out is derived from that.  vs the Acropolis Greece, the layouts of the buildings was based on approaches views and relationships to natural features an other structures.  That is more what we are after but ideas will be our driving site characteristics. 

Shameless boat bits

Ok here is some sexy boat hardware. Why? We were talking about the idea of the audience bringing in objects and Sam wrote up a couple test scenes.  Sebastian and I were struck by how much of it could be hung up or tied of to something so we did a little poking around and here are some of the nice things we found. 

Have your own nice tie of point detail?  Let us know.