Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Theatricalizing the museum-going experience in DEFINITION: AN INSTALLATION EXPERIENCE & LIMINAL ARCHIVE

• By drediman
• July 21, 2021
• No Comments

I recently got a chance to experience two shows that strike me as having taken some inspiration – at least in their current state – from the act of visiting museums and galleries. Here are my thoughts.

DEFINITION: AN INSTALLATION EXPERIENCE
Presented in partnership with The Bushwick Starr
Through August 1

First up at the Mercury Store in Gowanus is The Bushwick Starr’s production of Definition: An Installation Experience (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) by Whitney White (who is perhaps best known for directing Aleshea Harris’s searing What to Send Up When It Goes Down, which was just recently seen at BAM). Upon entering the venue, you’ll encounter an art gallery, where you’ll be able to peruse the pointed works of artists of color. The experience draws you in further by subsequently screening a series of fascinating short films showcasing marginalized voices. After the screening, the experience gets really interesting by honing in on a single point of view – that of a Black Woman and her internal awakening vis-a-vis therapy, art, work, and romantic relationships (this segment draws on material from Ms. White’s in-the-works musical Definition). This last portion takes the form of a theatrically immersive, dream-like sound and light installation. Like many of the theater pieces that have emerged on this side of the pandemic, the work eschews in-person performances and instead relies on pre-recorded text and musical compositions to narrate the piece (once again using those silent disco headphones to maximize immersion). Thanks to Ms. White’s nuanced writing and the out-of-the-box audacity of her overall concept, the overarching conceit of art’s power to open the mind’s eye comes across profoundly.

LIMINAL ARCHIVE
Ice Factory Festival at New Ohio Theatre
Closed

Last Saturday night, I caught the final of a handful of performances of Liminal Archive (RECOMMENDED), a multimedia offering of the 2021 Ice Factory Festival at New Ohio Theatre. Devised by Al Límite Collective, the production is yet another immersive theatrical experience that mimics the act of museum-going. In this case, audience members are ushered through a parade of six performative installations depicting the isolation and loneliness felt by artists around the world during the last year or so. These varied, well-curated micro-scenes – which were inspired by the more than 40 pieces of art culled from a cultural exchange for international artists during the pandemic and other recent occurrences – provide an exquisitely intimate glimpse at how artists have perceived and processed these game-changing events. At each idiosyncratically designed “exhibit”, I invariably found myself, over the course of approximately an hour, face-to-face with six performers – the game Leah Bachar, Shan Y. Chuang, Sanam Erfani, Monica Hunken, Ann Treesa Joy, and Philip Santos Schaffer (all excellent) – who used artistic expression as a means to articulate what for many of us was, and continues to be, an overwhelming and confounding period of our lives.