Art in the city, engaging the audience

I have been very busy with a big RFP for a great project that you'll hear about if my team wins, and not if we don't, so I haven't been able to blog very much lately. So just today I am getting to last Sunday's New York Times, and the arts section has two very interesting articles.

The first is how more theater productions in London are engaging the audience in significant ways within the performance, but for more challenging productions than say "Tony and Tina's Wedding" or "Shear Madness." See "Voyeur With a Ticket."

The thing I find challenging about theater is that the performance is watched by a group of people, but the experience is fundamentally individual, and some kind of transcendent gestalt experience isn't normally possible.

Mr. Brantley writes: "When you arrive at the East London office building where 'Bum Bum' takes place, the first thing you are asked to do is to give up any loose objects on your person — wallet, cellphone, keys, cash. There are practical reasons for this. Your body will be shaken, tossed and turned upside down in the journey that follows.But you are also being asked to surrender your identity, the better to assume a new one.

"Once stripped of personal belongings (a quaint phrase), you sit in a wheelchair and are pushed into the first of a series of rooms, where a live supporting cast awaits you to assume the first of many personas: a cabinet minister at a press conference, for instance, or a cat burglar's apprentice. The performers feed you your cues; what you say is up to you." Photo Credit: Elliott Franks

The second, "Boise and Trey McIntyre Project in a Deep Passion," is about how the Trey McIntryre Dance Project decided to locate in Boise, Idaho, and how the dance company has been embraced and supported by the community (in sponsorship, being designated as the city's "Cultural Ambassador," the university is remodeling a performance space for the company, etc.) and the kinds of in-community projects the company is doing as part of their presence there.

Dancers with the Trey McIntyre Project performing in a “Spurban,” where they show up in random public places and perform. Credit: Andrea Mohin/ The New York Times