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She thought she got it, too. Hands shaking with excitement, the spoon rattling against the teacup in her hands, Staci recounted every second of the oddest audition of her career to her roommate. Her skin flushed from the cocktail of adrenaline and August heat, but she couldn’t sit still or even stop to take a sip. There was too much to say. Charlotte eyes widened. “And you said yes?” “I had to. You know how many times I’ve gone in for roles I was made for, and all I left with was a half-hearted handshake?” Staci’s eyes glimmered. Yes, the director had seemed more than odd, if not downright creepy, and the low-budget film set, in a dingy warehouse pier, didn’t fill her mind with confidence that this project would be her stepping-stone to stardom. Still, there was a stirring inside of her. She’d opened the grimy warehouse door, at once desperately hoping she had the right place and desperately hoping she didn’t, to find the familiar buzz of theatre activity already underway. The costumer makers huddled and murmured in one corner, squinting and shaking their heads over reams of avocado green and creamsicle orange fabrics. The set designer paced the stage, alternately placing the cheap metal chair upside-down on the little wooden bar table and then removing it again on an endless loop. Green, purple, blue and red lights flashed on and then off, marionettes of the tech crew. “STOP PLEASING OTHERS, ANGELA!” He was in front of her suddenly, screaming so violently the veins in his neck visibly quivered, his eyes bulging and throbbing with rage. “You are only on this ride once. Are you going to waste it on rodents who don’t even care you exist? Do YOU even care you exist?” “I’m… I’m…” The spittle from the insult flecked her face. In her shock, it took her moments to realize he was delivering lines from the play, so disorienting was his attack. She had a sudden awareness that all eyes in the tacky, makeshift studio had turned towards them. Without time to discern anything more and with all her faculties having return to her, she leapt. “You wouldn’t know the first thing about the cost of trying to make it in this place, Frank! This wasn’t handed to me! You...you were born into this! Daddy made sure of it!” She looked down, briefly, then a back up again, leveling an icy glare on the man. “Perhaps...” She paused, for a moment, while her right hand reached inside the shiny black bag dangling at her waist. “...this ride needs one less passenger.” By Viva & Matt McCluskey dramatic reading (at the June event) by Suzanne Schapira
Chilly! Not so much as to cause discomfort, just annoyance. The neon sign is aglow, slowly purring a slight hum with it's cold cathode-tube-gas-discharge. I really wish there were chairs in here, but it's just me alone and not quite dressed wearing simply, well, matte red lipstick for whatever reason and with my back a few inches from the weathered wall behind me. The moments leading up to this are inaccessible from my memory banks, a lapse. Nothing outright scary, just adequately fuzzed over. Nonlinear time, partitioned by memory that is sorted in order of importance by some internal arbitrator of neurological hierarchy-access denied. My memory is generally pretty sharp, although year to year it seems to be less dependable. This however is an unusual, pointed lapse, 'scene deleted.' The floor has a garish mesh of stripes rolling back in a mildew-stained carpeting most likely left over from the seventies. The stage is a tavern setting, empty of actors but betraying signs of recent use. This whole setting feels important, as if I am supposed to divine meaning from it somehow, or else the performers all left already? A generic antique pinball machine, probably all flippers and bumpers and pre-multiball era perhaps, sits underappreciated in the corner, faintly whirring. Chairs have been halfheartedly turned upside down on the table and an empty liquor box is left on the floor beside them, either absentmindedly or with little passion by the bar staff. A centered door unapologetically ajar traces a rectangular void of blue outside its threshold. The houselights are on in this venue, and a droll static buzz is oscillating faintly enough to forget and then tune into and then forget again all in the same train of thought. (oh yes, the neon light) The funniest thing about this door is that you can hear the-feel the-abyss of cacophony of the outside world funneling through, and yet all that is visible is flat blue light that squint as you might doesn't seem to come into focus. There is no pit for an orchestra, no balcony. I've been here now for long enough to question just how long it actually has been, just long enough to be curious if there is a formal start or end to this experience. I don't remember entering this theater, or purchasing a ticket, or sitting in my kitchen looking in the weekly declaring out loud that this seemed a good way to spend the evening, or morning, or whatever this increment on the chronometer could be interpreted as. I'm staring disembodied at myself staring at the stripes on the wall. At the pinball machine. At the ambiguous blue bright vacuum. The seemingly arbitrary placement of the boxes that may or may not contain boozy items. I wonder out of the blue what song I would choose as the title music for the end credit sequence of my life. Not sure if I tried to leap through the door if it would be allowable, and here I seem to be paralyzed in an observational assignment, stuck in anticipation of what this all means. It could all be smoke and mirrors in any case. Flats and stagehands, etc. An outlandish speakeasy? There are times when I'm laying in bed trying to fall asleep when a laziness takes hold and I plan over and over potential different ways of shifting from one side of my body to the other, and nothing seems to be the right solution. I lay and mull the options of muscle movement over and over, cycle them as if rinsing my mouth with the thoughts until there's hardly anything left at all to spit out. My stillness in this “theater” feels similar, suspiciously dreamlike and yet so sharply coherent that it seems out of the question. The blue rectangular void starts to emit a sound close to distant birds and possibly a thin ribbon of morning commuter traffic erratically shuffling along a highway? It should be noted that the floor is painted like the stripes of a Pendleton blanket, or thick long model paint along a vintage soapbox derby race-car. My feet are cold and seem faraway looking back at me from hibernation. I'm losing my patience, and can now hear the loudening open space and faraway sirens and erratic metal grinding of garbage trucks (it isn't trash day today, is it?) Let's get on with this, really. By Morgan Hobart  installation with blown glass cup (featured at event) by Dan Mirer
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66 OURS - Collaborative Writing ProjectStarting with Phase 1, writers had 66 days to base their writing on 1 anonymous person & 1 vignette, dutifully and judiciously assigned to each writer by Amelia. Photos given to the writersEach writer was given a combination of 1 person + 1 vignette from the following:
Person 1
Person 2
Person 3
Vignette 1
Vignette 2
Vignette 3
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