Proposal for Canadian Theatre Review
Working title: Where you’re at.
My, admittedly personal, definition of site-specific places the site first: I find a site that excites me and I wonder what performance it would create. Learning what the site requires comes first – it points toward content, shapes the structure and is the design.
For the moment, let’s place that work on the one extreme of a line.
On the other end, let’s put the box set for the show rehearsed in a hall that shares no architecture with the final venue and is built to fit in the back of a truck.
A huge space exists between these two extremes, but little language to talk about it. What is between “normal” and site specific? What borders on them both, not quite either?
It is this space that I wish to investigate in this piece, using my recent (and on-going) work as a dramaturge on Public Recordings’ Manual for Incidence (conceived and directed by Ame Henderson) which will be performed at the end of May at X Space Gallery in Toronto and the beginning of June in Montreal at Quartier Éphémère (an old Foundry.)
When I became involved, Henderson referred to the project as site specific, yet didn’t have a space in mind. Certain ideas were clear to her – she didn’t want to use a theatre, she wanted to be in residency at the performance venue for as long as possible, she talked about small people in a big space. Many of our initial discussions revolved around our differing language about site-specificity.
We have worked since February on solos with each dancer/performer, presenting open rehearsals in Montreal and Toronto – each on engaged with the physical space (Studio 303 in Montreal and Hub 14 in Toronto.) We are now creating the group piece in rehearsals that frequently move between our studio and the gallery. We are at the crux of finding what our relationship (not quite site specific, definitely no box set) with space is, and it’s this crux I want to examine in this article for Canadian Theatre Review.
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Early we talked about location. About how where you were affected what you did. Am I a different person in Halifax than I am in Toronto? I have different social habits, I talk about different things – but there are as many if not more similarities. I am not quite the same, not quite different.
We talked about these problems and how a piece might be about that space – the space created when we travel, when we move. We would be rehearsing and performing in 2 cities with performers from 7 cities, 2 contintants. (It struck us midway through rehearsal that the show would be performed in no ones home town)
When we move, how do we adapt? How do we both stay the same and change. First moving Vancouver from Halifax I tried to find the replacement café’s. Not being able to find Café Mokka, I found Commercial Drive. Moving to Toronto, I found Little Italy, moving back to Halifax I tried to find Little Italy.
