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.