My love of site-specific by Assistant Director, Brooke Leifso

Hello! My name is Brooke Leifso and I am the assistant director for the National Elevator Project! I’m an Edmonton based theatre artist, directing and devising theatre for all sorts of spaces and faces.

Most theatre in Edmonton, and indeed everywhere, is created in a specific space designed for it. The audience knows what to expect and are generally familiar with the etiquette required: be at least fifteen minutes early, turn off your cell phone, sit in the dark quiet space giving the actors your full attention and clap at the end. The audience sits separate from the actors, creating a buffer between the action and the spectator. It allows audience to be somewhat removed.

Site-specific theatre is theatre pieces done outside of a conventional theatre space: coffee shops, living rooms, funeral homes, hotel rooms, wherever.  The play or piece or performance speaks to its space, either as a setting of the play or something about that room/space.  It could be literal, looking at the mood that space evokes or what it might mean to our society—as in the case of a Funeral Home. Site-specific theatre asks us all to look at the mundane spaces we occupy totally differently. Every space has the potential to be a venue.

My favourite thing about site-specific work is it’s potential to break the rules, change the rituals and ask audiences to step out of their comfort zone. How does it do these things? By taking audience out of their conventional space, you’re taking them out of their conventions. Audiences can’t sit in an elevator, they have to do what they normally do (stand, wait for the door, etc) and let the action happen. It's up-close and personal.

The National Elevator Project will allow me to work in a space I use on a regular basis and turn it into something magical; and not just one day but everyday. Hopefully elevators will never be the same for us and our audiences!

Process notes on "Tip of Things" by Catherine Banks

Catherine Banks

I had a huge struggle to find my elevator play. I had this idea that I liked very much but I couldn’t make it work. I get a lot of petitions about really worthy causes from people with names like David, Sacha, Emily with my name in the body of the text. Example: Catherine thank you for signing the petition to end blank and we hope you will also sign our petition to save blank. I confess after a while I started to feel like I was a very bad person if I didn’t sign. So I came up with this sort of plot that my character would be trapped in the elevator with a David, Sacha or Emily and that the audience would be behind these sort of movers’ curtains and play the role of people that needed to be saved by the petition. I guess I thought the elevator would be could be a metaphor, blah blah blah idea was not working and was not working still not working several months later.

Then Heather Inglis was in Halifax. Then I had a workshop in a week, then in days.

I like the short play format and I had written several that I had never finished during a beautiful workshop with the inspiring Marie Irene Fornes. I pulled them out and looked each over. The play I settled on was one that I had written set in a hotel room. As soon as I put those two women in the elevator, in action, my imagination re-sparked and I was off.

Our plan for the workshop was to spend half of it around the table and half in an elevator. The cast was Andrea Lee Norwood and Ann-Marie Kerr.  Emmy Alcorn of Mulgrave Road - who commissioned the piece- came into Halifax from Guysborough for the workshop  - there are no elevators in Guysborough. After a couple of intense hours around a table we all squeezed into the production elevator at the Neptune Theatre for this crazy little workshop. We borrowed a cleaning cart we found in the hallway and Ann-Marie used Heather's coat as a baby. Our elevator kept getting called even though it was technically “locked”.  Emmy had to get off for a bit and we had a hell of time getting back to her floor. Then about half way through I had to take a break from it all, I can get very nervous in small confined places. It was a great afternoon and we all laughed a lot. What I discovered was that being so close to the characters and unable to walk out electrified the experience. Rather than being an “audience member” I become a witness. That’s what it felt like to me at least.

I think Andrea, Ann-Marie and Emmy were pretty puzzled about the piece at the beginning of the day and it was fun to watch as they came to it line by line. I loved how Ann Marie was right there, all her own mothering instincts arriving like a freight train. The small space seemed to amplify all of it.

I came in hoping that I was on the tip of something---meaning hoping I was writing something very intense. Now I’m pretty sure of that and I’m happy that this play has found the right home in this project.

My next steps actually don’t have to do with the element of elevators per se, but rather  with exploring the script itself in a fairly conventional way. I’m considering adding a layer of class—or race— to the play. What if the baby is Asian and the mother white? Not to make a big statement but as another layer.

I am very excited to see and read the other elevator plays. What did people do? How did they solve the problems? How did they approach the task within the "rules"?.

They sound amazing.

AMAZING.

Looking forward.

Elevated Drama

Rick Chafe

I had my first ever workshop-by-Skype last week, linking Edmonton and Winnipeg, and can report it works very well.  At least for a play that's 2 and a half minutes long. 

Mine is a naturalistic piece:  A young man gets on with the audience, rides the elevator up to the top floor of a medical building.  His girlfriend gets on, finished her appointment early.  The kit was wrong, she's pregnant.  They try to have as private a conversation as possible in an elevator, but it immediately, well, elevates.  Or descends.  Whatever. 

We started calling the style hyper-realism—a result, I think, not of the scene itself, but of the audience being implicated in the realism of the action, something Ken Williams talked about in the previous post.  They won't be implicated as participants in the conversation (presumably that is—as Ken said, who knows what an audience will do in this situation?), but rather as non-participants.  As bystanders, whom are suddenly made to be non-participating eavesdroppers on one of those uber-private conversations embarrassingly played out far-too-publicly.  But they also must play their role as a theatre audience: to watch and listen to a play.  The young couple has pushed their way to the back of the elevator.  Will the audience turn and watch?  Or follow polite public protocol and keep their gaze focused forward and ears focused back?

These were not my primary concerns in writing the play.  I was just writing a private story that could spill out in a public place.  But this is almost entirely the dynamic we played with for the whole afternoon's workshop: the drama played out between the two characters while making use of the added tensions of the drama between the characters and the audience.

You could say playing all this in an elevator eliminates the fourth wall.  But I don't think it will do that at all.  I think instead it will make us hyper-aware of the fourth wall. Yes, the physical space between actor and audience has been eliminated—for a full house performance the actors' bodies might be in contact with audience bodies for the whole play.  But the result for at least some of the audience is sure to be a heightened awareness of the fact that these two people are actors, that I'm the audience, that none of us are real people in real life—and felt more sharply than we would ever experience it in a black box seated ten or a hundred feet away from the stage.  

Just to crank that idea one notch farther, I think one of the implications of doing plays in elevators—for naturalism certainly, but maybe in different ways with all of the types of performance the project will present—is that it will push the audience to experience two kinds of fourth wall conventions at the same time: the fourth wall rule of theatre, that actors and audience shall pretend to be unaware of each other, and the fourth wall rule of social space, that citizens shall pretend not to notice each other's embarrassing public behavior, and we shall pretend to mind own business.  Which I think are both pretty much the same rule.

So that's what we found playing for a couple of hours in one possible elevator world.  I'm looking forward to walking into another fifteen.  

Ruminations on creating a play for the National Elevator Project.

Kenneth T. Williams

We had a saying in photojournalism – zoom with your feet. Get close to the action, don’t rely on fancy shmancy telephoto lenses to get the shots you needed. This could be risky. You could get hurt or killed. But look at the images from photojournalists that have had the most impact on you. I bet that most of them are close ups of faces. (Steve McCurry's "the Afghan girl" comes to mind http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/original-story-text.)

No matter what the subject matter is – war famine, sports, elections – the eyes of another person will tell us everything we need to know about the story. Celebration or anguish, the eyes give us away. A photo, however, lets us maintain eye contact without feeling embarrassed. We’d never look at another person that way, especially if they were right in front of us.

As a photojournalist, I willingly walked into the middle of conflict to get the images that told the story. As a playwright, this is what I’m asking my audience to do by inviting them into an elevator to witness conflict. What’s the implied agreement between audience and actor when they’re this physically close?

It’s my feeling that the audience’s proximity to the action makes them integral to the action. It’s no longer the lucky – or unlucky, depending on how you feel about it – few who get pulled on stage when the play demands participation from the audience. Some performers get up close and personal but there’s still an implied barrier because of the set up of stage and seating. In an elevator, everyone’s a player when the entire space is used for performance.

What we don’t know is how the audience will react. Of course, we never truly know this. We know how we want them to react in a conventional theatre space. I don’t know what I want this time. I’m aiming for “holy shit, I can’t believe these crazy people are in the same elevator as me!” I’ve got the audience trapped for just a few minutes, I want to have some fun with them.

And if those aren't challenges, I've decided to adapt a story from the Old Testament so that it will not look out of place in an elevator. Because, you know, why the hell not.

Who's Involved

Catherine Banks – Commissioned by Mulgrave Road Theatre
Meg Coles – Commissioned by Artistic Fraud
Ryan Griffiths – Commissioned by Eastern Front Theatre
Melissa Mullen and Rob Maclean – Commissioned by Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre
Brad Fraser – Commissioned by Shadow Theatre
Rick Chafe – Commissioned by The Canadian Centre for Theatre Creation
Jason Chinn – Commissioned by Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre
Kendra Fanconi – Commissioned by Magnetic North Theatre Festival
Greg MacArthur – Commissioned by Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre
Melissa Thingelstad – Commissioned by Workshop West Theatre
Jordi Mand – Commissioned by Nightswimming Theatre
Donia Mounsef - Commissioned by L’Unithéâtre
David van Belle / Eric Rose – Commissioned by Ghost River Theatre
Peter Boychuk – Commissioned by Rumble Productions
Ken Williams – Commissioned by Persephone Theatre

Lessons from Elevators

-On very short plays in very small spaces

In early February (seems like last week) we workshopped three elevator plays by Greg MacArthur, Jason Chinn and Melissa Thingelstad and presented workshop productions at Workshop West’s Canoe Festival thanks to the support of Workshop West Theatre.

We dubbed this part of the process fro the NATIONAL ELEVATOR PROJECT the “incubator phase”. It was an opportunity to test both the aesthetics and practicalities of making theatre in elevators and share what we’ve learned with the network of theatre artists from across the country who are part of the project.

In addition to the three plays that were part of the February phase of the project, we have had the opportunity to workshop early drafts of a few additional pieces as I travel across the country on other business. In February I workshopped Catherine Banks' play “The Tip of Things” in Halifax. We also workshopped Ken William’s play "The Righteous Woman" in early May.

I found the process of developing, rehearsing and performing all three plays both fascinating and surprising -things I always hope theatre will be.  I've attached some of my thoughts on plays in Elevators here... as a resource as you embark on your own writing and development processes.

Time
I think we can all agree that in most cases longer development/rehearsal processes yield richer more credible work.  I think most professional theatre artists would happily opt for more time to develop their work than there are often funds to pay for.  So one of our initial questions going into the Incubator Phase of the National Elevator Project was: “How long will we need to develop and rehearse these works?” It would be easy to say: “Oh each play is only five minutes, we can knock it off in an afternoon.” And we considered that —though not for very long. And in truth it might have proved to be true if we where producing a series of skits. But we have arranged for the commission of 16 plays by serious Canadian playwrights about life altering events, conflicts, and discoveries. These are plays about moments of transformation. The minutes in our lives that change us inexorably. And what we’ve found is that each work has demanded a development /rehearsal process that was somewhat more significant than we had anticipated.

One of the qualities of Theatre Yes’s ‘off-site’ work (and so this project) is that the productions are grounded in strong text, which is painstakingly rehearsed and explored. Sometimes I’ve seen ‘site-specific’ work where the texts and theatrical execution take a back seat to the novelty of the space that is the starring act. Sometimes it seems that excitement about location can become the focus of ‘site-specific’ work. Theatre Yes is interested in great texts as the foundation of fully realized theatrical events which find life in unconventional spaces. Theatre spaces where the audience is in close proximity to the performers allow us to explore the potential of the theatrical reality that when we see a play, any play, we are in the same physical room as the actors.

Back to the National Elevator Project (and time)...  We’ve found that each short play lives inside of a unique and fully envisioned world created by the playwright. As such each play requires more workshop, table work and rehearsal time than we had anticipated. In almost every case we found the four-hours of rehearsal time wasn’t enough to thoroughly investigate the text. Further, we found that in every case we were short on rehearsal/tech time scheduled 4 hours and were rushing to be ready for an audiences to arrive.

Actors found that they wanted to be extra secure in what they were doing because the quarters are so close. In an elevator every detail becomes magnified in the small space so specifics are more important than ever. And we all know that that just takes time.

"An elevator will take whatever you're doing and amplify it (a lot). Maybe that's obvious - it took me by surprise anyway. The intimacy of the space makes every detail discernible."
~ Jason Chinn, playwright

In every case we needed to test the work in an elevator to figure out how the movement through the building and in the space would work. Ie where do the actors come from? Are they discovered on the elevator? How does the audience enter? If the elevator stops at a particular floor who calls it when? How are entrances of performers and technical elements cued (we used cell phones and text messages to communicate with volunteers on various floors ).

At the end of the “Incubator Phase” the lesson was: Even a very short play is still a complete work and as such it takes discussion and investigation to find ones way into the world of the play. The time it takes to do this is partially, but not critically, related to the length of a play. As we move forward we are planning for more workshop time, more rehearsal time and more on-site time (tech time).

Space 

"Yes it's site-specific theatre - but oh-so-much-more. There's something dangerous that's happening here - close quarters, intimate and wholly theatrical.  These aren't just plays transferred into an elevator, these artists are working to re-define the theatrical space and in doing so are bending time"  
~ Dave Horak, MacEwan Theatre Arts Instructor/ Edmonton Actors Theatre Artistic Director


I’ve heard tell of musings that the National Elevator Project might be perceived as “gimmicky”.  I suppose this would be because the central notion, writing for and performing in non-theatre spaces, is not everyone’s cup of tea. Tripe, caviar, poutine and lima beans all have fans and detractors. Like almost everyone else in pro theatre, we’re interested in engaging audiences in our work. I love everything about traditional theatres. Really. Everything. I love walking into the building, working in the building, I love the first moment I sit down in the seats, the programs, a proscenium stage, the sound, lights and the magic they can create. (I’ve also come to love the smell of latex paint.) I could go on... Most times when I go to the theatre, I know exactly what my experience will be in bold strokes. I’ll come in. Sit in a seat (which I hope is comfortable). I watch actors from a distance. I leave and share my thoughts/feeling about the experience with others. It is comfortable and familiar and dear to me.

BUT I’m also interested in the unfamiliar. I’m interested in exploring what theatre can be if it is to exist as a credible and serious art form in nooks and crannies of our communities, in public spaces, in our everyday lives. And frankly since I was a kid, I’ve dreamed plays in all kinds of places: gardens, cars, interesting abandoned buildings, hotel rooms, parking garages and so forth. I’m lucky and grateful that I’ve been able to explore this at Theatre Yes. And I hope that this investigation will engage audiences in the possibilities of serious theatre performed in surprising spaces they might not have thought possible.

The corner stone of the NATIONAL ELEVATOR PROJECT is that the plays are written specifically to be performed in elevators. Confined spaces that move. The playwrights are to control the length of the elevator ride from within the play. That is they are to design the play in such a way that it will be five minutes in length.

Each writer who has submitted an early bird draft has addressed this in a different way. In each case, we have tested either in workshop or workshop production how the work ‘plays’ in an actually moving elevator. We have found this to be en essential part of each workshop process because it is where the technicalities of sculpting an experience in the space can be investigated.

What we have found is that action seems to need to slow down in an elevator because of the close proximity of the audience. A scene that an audience can absorb easily from 20 feet needs to play with deliberate space inserted in such a confined space so that the audience can take in all the information. It is easy for people to miss things. They might be looking at the person to their right while the person on the left has an important reaction. If we are not careful of that the audience will miss something. Performances need to be very specifically sculpted if the goal is for the audience to all leave with the same general information/experience. We've found that the audiences focus needs to be guided with considerable attention paid to where people will look and why. If the decision is that we want each audience member to understand the event differently when they leave (I’m thinking Sleep No More) this might be less important. But it is still a consideration. Close quarters mean a different rhythm and energy is required.

"At the end of the piece, many audience members said they would like to ride again, since it felt like it went so fast and they felt they couldn't absorb it all in one ride"
~ Holly Cinnamon, Actor

The smaller the space the more of a challenge it is to control the focus. Every actor gesture becomes magnified. It is a bit like an extreme close up in film. This means that clarifying each moment is essential. Melissa Thingelstad’s piece had a large movement component. (Think modern dance in an elevator with the audience interspersed with the performers.)  Melissa's piece needed to be sculpted for the space in a way we had not anticipated before we got into an elevator to work it. Because the movement was happening around the audience in very, very close quarters it required us to invent a unique aesthetic approach to deliver the story.

Larger elevators are easier to “play”.  Where the audience has more distance from the performers the issues of following narrative are not as significant.

Elevators won’t move until called.  Neither of us had thought much about it until this project. This means that deciding when the button is pushed becomes an important tool in controlling the length of the ride. We will be obtaining permission to use elevators where we can ensure that there will be no calls during the performance. (Other than the ones we make.) This is an important tool for controlling the length of the ride.  Old elevators can take forever to go one floor. Newer ones can take seconds to go 15 floors. “When is the button pushed?” Can be a more useful question than how long does it take for the elevator to travel.

Most elevators have keys. Every key does a different thing. In most cases it allows you to manually keep the door open until you want to close it. We’ll be getting keys for any elevators we use. The idea is that we can make the elevator do what we want it to.  Of course that will vary somewhat from elevator to elevator.

Older elevators have more options for manual control. We worked in a great elevator courtesy of Edmonton’s Harcourt House Gallery, that had a manual stop feature and in which we could turn the light off. Yes! We did take advantage of that elevator for the workshop...

Of course we don’t have unlimited resources for obtaining elevators; but we are wily about getting what we want and we’ll do our best to find elevators that lift (so to speak) each play. From the point of view of writing, controlling the length of the ride most likely means that some scenes may take place outside of the elevator. If there is a specific ambience for the elevator of a building you are looking for be sure to let us know via the stage directions.

"I think it's important to be specific in terms of the kind of elevator you want to work in in terms of size, length of ride, etc. [...] take into account the space not just on the elevator but also the atmosphere outside and around the elevator. What will the audience's experience be just before and after."
~ Greg MacArthur, playwright

Action

Elevator plays are intense. We found that there were audience members who were so taken aback by the intensity of the experience of being that close to the actors that they reported they “couldn’t hear” what was being said and were unable to follow the story. This is to say at times they were over stimulated and couldn’t absorb the play. Some audience members could not/would not look at the actors though they were listening intently. Now, this might be an effect we see in some moments of some plays… or not. It can be a bit off putting to actors, but it is likely unavoidable. We like intense experiences at Theatre Yes and I’m not fussed by this type of reaction. It is a phenomenon that can be used to sculpt the overall experience we are creating for the audience. When do we want audiences to be pushed to not being able to look or listen? What would the function of this reaction be? How could we use it to the greatest possible effect? How do we coax people into comfort when that is important for the story?

"It was great, compact fun and the audience seemed suitably uncomfortable..."
~ Greg MacArthur, playwright

Another reality of elevator plays is that the audience does not know what the rules for watching the play are. It is an experience that is unlike any theatrical experience they have had. There are no seats.  There is no stage.  They don’t know what to do.

We’ve found that audiences confronted with events that they don’t know the rules of are very cautious. They take few risks and explore spaces very, very tentatively.  The idea that they have to make an unguided choice is not a part of most theatre experiences. We’ve found they’ve been respectful to a fault of the performers and the performance. They want to be told what to do.  

"... My character felt like the spokesperson for the audience."
~ Laura Raboud, Actor

So in elevators audiences don’t know where to go or what to do unless they have clear clues, in other words are told how to respond. They worry: “Do I push the button?” “When the door opens do I go in?” “If I push one button, (say to open the door to start the play) “do I press another to go up?” “Do I talk back?”  “Should I respond to an actor if they ask me a question and I'm less than a foot away?" and on…

In Greg MacArthur’s play two characters in hazmat suits load audience members onto an elevator while having a banal conversation about the technicalities of their jobs. As the audience is loaded on the elevator they are talked about, but never addressed. As they travel upwards it becomes clear to them that they are human cargo, considered non-human for some reason only the characters know. As the play progresses the audience gradually comes to know that they are being exported as human livestock. MacArthur’s play places them in a role that is very clear. They come to understand with increasing horror that they are considered to be subhuman and that they are to do what they are told.

It will be important for each play to make a contract with the audience. To let them know what the rules are.  The audience is present and so very much a part of each performance. The work seems strongest when we don’t ignore the proximity of the audience but rather embrace it as an essential reality of each piece.

Audiences were amazed at how full each experience was even in workshop production. They had intense and unique experiences, which they felt, were quite unforgettable. Some commented that 5 minutes was all I could take in such a small space. They were also amazed at how complete each theatrical journey could be in such a short time.

It’s all pretty fascinating. We are pumped. Looking forward to your questions and comments.

Rules for Elevator Plays

• Elevator plays are about life altering events, conflicts, and discoveries that take us to the heights of joy and plunge us to the depths of despair in mere moments. They are about moments of transformation. The minutes in our lives that change us inexorably.

• Elevator plays are a maximum of 5 minutes in length.

• The elevator must be essential to the play. The text must need an elevator in order to be performed. It must rely on it. It should not be a piece that can be performed in another venue.

• The audience enters the elevator with the actors.

• The presence of the audience and their hyper-close proximity to the performers needs to be a vital component of the text. The play needs to create a contract with the audience which helps them to understand how to respond to the action of the play in performance.

• Each play has three actors in it. You may use supernumeraries (extras).

• The performers must control the length of the elevator ride as part of the action of the play. Elevator rides are mostly shorter than 5 minutes. In order for the play to be 5 minutes in length the actors will need to control the elevator’s use. You can count on us to have elevator keys.

• The action may take place inside and outside the elevator. Scenes can happen on various floors up or down from the starting place.

• There will be no technicians aboard the elevator. Technical requirements need to be minimal and must be executed by the actors inside the action of the play.

• No blackouts.

• No emergency stops.

• Elements that will require re-set before the play begins are allowed. Example: The elevator is full of balloons that are popped during each performance.

• The elevator can be used as a metaphor. Example: The people in the elevator could be a blood clot moving towards someone’s brain.

• We will be seeking exclusive use of each elevator.

• The plays will be performed in two cycles of 8 plays. The first cycle will be in October in Edmonton. The second cycle will be performed as part of Workshop West’s Canoe Festival in 2014. 

• For the Edmonton productions the plays will be available for viewing simultaneously for two hours each performance evening. Audiences will meet at a central location where they will be given a map and directions to each elevator. From there they will make their way from elevator to elevator. Audiences will be free to view each work in whatever order they wish.

Welcome To The National Elevator Project

Theatre Yes believes that very intimate performance environments create intense, arousing, personalized experiences with a high degree of interactivity which give recorded and digital media a ‘run for their money’.

In elevators we ascend towards the sky and plummet to the earth in mere seconds while jammed into tight spaces with people we don’t know. So, also, our lives are shaped and changed by transactions and collisions with strangers who are transformed into friends and sometimes become family. The life altering events, conflicts, and discoveries that take us to the heights of joy and plunge us to the depths of despair can happen in mere moments. Theatre Yes’s NATIONAL ELEVATOR PROJECT will challenge audiences to witness themselves and each other in the midst of transformation through the prismatic lens of 16-newly commissioned Canadian plays.

The circumstance of riding an elevator will be essential to the construction of each play. These works will be built to capitalize on the restrictions and opportunities an elevator creates. The plays will use the uneasiness which people feel sharing confined public spaces to open up unique theatre experiences that will expand the boundaries of what audiences understand theatre to be. Audiences will share the same space with performers and so will become part of each performance. The works will explore the impact of very-short-form narrative while developing themes of transformation, using elevators as both location and metaphor for those dizzying moments in our lives where we are changed. The plays will be crafted and performed in such a way as to make room for audiences’ authentic responses to the work, removing the safety net of traditional theatre, inviting them to enter into hyper-intimate and one-of-a-kind, performance experiences.

Contemporary culture connects AND isolates us, the digital/virtual realm so dominates our lives that we cannot help but experience real-time, real-world artistic events differently. Live theatre struggles to compete with the enticingly close, personal and instantly gratifying array of digitized entertainment that stimulates and challenges us intellectually, changing the vary nature of our thinking.

The NATIONAL ELEVATOR PROJECT will immerse audiences in short-form narratives occurring in moving site-specific locations. Elevators are laden with challenges, for many of us, because they force us to confront hard-wired, hidden fears. Our heart rates climb as we step inside an elevator whether we want them to or not. It is a confined space. We have to stand closer to people than we would like. We literally become heavier and lighter during the ride, invoking involuntary sensations of falling as we are propelled vertically, at lightening speed, on thin cables, which if they broke (and we’ve all thought about it) would mean certain death. We experience primal fight or flight instincts in elevators and this project capitalizes on these physiologically loaded environments to create one-of-a-kind experiences for audiences. For the duration of each play (5 minutes MAX) there will be nowhere for audiences to hide, the boundaries and safety nets of screen and stage will be taken away. This is theatre that capitalizes and magnifies one of the fundamental realities of live theatre: the performers are in the same room with the audience. And in this case it’s a very small room. Via the NATIONAL ELEVATOR PROJECT we hope to viscerally engage audiences’ with an intensity that affirms the power of live theater over recorded / online media.

NATIONAL ELEVATOR PROJECT is creating real-time, real-space connections between artists and audiences underscoring the potency of communion and connection in a culture that increasingly separates us physically from one another.

ELEVATORS I (EIGHT PLAYS)
October 17th - 27th, 2013

ELEVATORS II (EIGHT PLAYS)
January 21st - February 1st, 2014 
Presented at Workshop West's Canoe Festival http://www.workshopwest.org