What is a stage today? We are always performing. We are always on camera. Our daily activities are rehearsals. We know our cues. We have perfect timing. We see ourselves the way we are seen. We carry our stage, our mirror, our selves in our pockets.
Overexposed and underdeveloped…maybe it’s not what’s on stage that’s so interesting anymore. These days it might be nice to get behind the scenes. To stay in the space before suspended disbelief. To sense, but not to watch. To hear, but not to see what everyone’s meant to see…
Take us backstage, behind the scenes. Maybe we’ll find a new view there. Maybe it’ll be surprising, but not like it’s trying. Maybe it’s got a secret. A case of mistaken identity. Or a place to hide. If all the world’s a stage, then where can I find the wings?
Waiting in the wings is a physical infrastructure for the anti-stage. When Howard Van Doren Shaw created the Ragdale Ring outdoor theater in 1912, so much that was not on display made the experience magic; the hawthorn allee, the state-of-the-art electric lighting, and four parallel lines of shrubs that served as backstage infrastructure. All it takes is procession, lights, and wings to build a world.
This installation uses these three critical elements from Shaw’s original site design and wraps them around each other, mixing lighting, backdrop, backstage, and audience together, for an immersive stage-in-the-round. The difference between foreground and background begins to blur. Could this lead to new types of performance?
Layers of stud wall unify a simple, neutral system as infrastructure while in between spatial qualities continuously shift. A concentric foreground and background ring establish varying approaches and stages while one undulating wall bounds spaces and brings lighting to them. Meanwhile, the semitransparent removable scrim that lines the walls, layers and unlayers, drawing visitors through translucencies, shadows, close calls, and private sanctuaries… to some un-foregone conclusion.
The scrims transform with lighting conditions: projection, washing, backlighting. They naturally take on the environment’s dapples, shadows, and textures. Whispers pass between. Figures appear, and vanish. Every space is equally ready for activation—though who knows for what, or by whom. Perhaps the performance is already underway…
