Best of 2010-2011: Chimera
Editorial
The actress is playing the character and is in the audience, behind us, next to us, in there, and its dark, and she asks us if we want a cup of coffee. Or maybe she asked if she could have a cup of coffee.
There you go, artists, this can be a little bit of insight into what an audience member might remember months later.
Something about coffee to start off with. Set a good tone. If it were me producing this particular event, probably a good chance I'd have distributed actual coffee at that point. But I wasn't and they didn't. That's fine. Still set the tone. If I was producing it, I might have had to pee later in the play and spoiled the momentum of my audience experience.
So in essay on something I liked in the past year, including why I liked it, what I liked about it, I pick Chimera by Deborah Stein & Suli Holum, by the Workhaus Collective, at the Playwrights Center.
Chimera was pretty multi-media, creative video and interactive projections, one might call it artsy. Which is fine, but not a criteria for judgment.
I remember really liking The Count of Monte Cristo on the Showboat a few years back. Like Chimera, it compelled me not to fidget, and as an audience member, made me feel like I was cast in the experience.
The rules of this essay are name your criteria, so here you go:
- I forget to FIDGET
- Audience becomes part of the experience