THEATRE AND T R A N S IT : A TRANS 1 T - OR I ENTED,

S 1T E - S P E C I F 1C T R I P T Y C H

BY GUILLERMO A V 1L E S - R O D R IG U E Z

The last ten years in American theatre have witnessed the rapid, even explosive, rise of the performance genre known as site-specific

theatre. This increase has been particularly visible in Southern California, and specifically in Los Angeles, which has seen a pronounced increase in the staging of site-specific theatrical productions in the last five years. What follows is an examination of three productions performed in the last few years in Los Angeles that together represent the coherent and pronounced site- specific exploration of modes of transportation. In a city as fragmented and sprawling as Los Angeles, with its lack of a geographical center, it is fitting that theatre makers would latch on to one of the only cords that hold Los Angeles together—the transportation network. The three productions include a spectacle-filled processional performance, Meet Me @Metro (2010), a collection of intimate theatrical performances known

as The Car Plays (2006), and a time/space durational site-specific performance titled Stephan Koplowitz’ Red Line Time (2013).

Meet Me @Metro

Meet Me @Metro (M3) was conceived by the author in 2010. M3 was the first sponsored and sanctioned site-specific production ever in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (Metro’s) history. (See more at: http://thesource.metro.net/2010/04/15/meet- me-metro-merges-performance-and-public-transit-on- may-2nd) Metro designated M3 as a pilot arts program, which qualified it to receive marketing, staff and logistical support. Among other support, it provided 300 complementary day passes that allowed audience members to ride the trains for free the whole day of the performance. The liability factor for an unprecedented performance of this type naturally heightened Metro’s

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vigilance. The Authority assigned Fran Curbello, its Communications Manager in charge of special events and promotions, to M3 as a minder, and she followed the performance from start to finish.

The project consisted of a series of six original site-specific plays staged by various perform ance groups twice on 2 May 2010. The performances took place along the Metro Red and Blue rail lines that run from U nion Station in dow ntow n Los Angeles to the K en n e th H ahn s t a t i o n in the W atts n e i g h b o r h o o d . T h e o f f ic ia l p e r f o r m a n c e s were p e r f o r m e d n e a r the stations on the line, but an add it iona l form of unofficial perform ance developed as audience members traveled with performers on the train. This joint processional shared by audience and performers gave the event a jovial tone and satisfied the spectators' expectation that they would participate in the work; th e y w ere th e show as they p a rad ed from p e r f o r m a n c e s to p to performance stop.

Each of the pieces was developed by a separate performance group and focused on the story of the co m m u n ity served by the m e tro stop at which the perform ance was tak ing place. The pieces were developed a n d p e r f o r m e d by artists of greatly varied a r t i s t i c s e n s ib i l i t i e s , r e p r e s e n t i n g v a ry in g a r t i s t i c d i s c i p l i n e s : d a n c e , fo r e x a m p le , with The Collage Dance T h e a te r (n o w H e id i Duckler Dance Theatre); p u p p e t r y w i th M oo D oo P u p p e ts ; M usic w ith the O b ie -aw ard - w in n in g p l a y w r ig h t , p e r fo rm e r , c o m p o se r , a n d s o n g w r i t e r Rick B u rk h a rd t ’s N onsense Thea te r Company; and theatre with East LA Rep,

Epic Megalopolis, and Watts Village Theater Company. All the companies involved in M3 were selected for their adventurous aesthetic and geographical diversity. The participating performers also seemed to believe that this project was special on many different levels and that their participation would be historic. This was a sentiment that permeated the event; as Meropi Peponides, the dram aturg and co-producer of the

p ro jec t , pu t it in the program, the event was m ore than a show; it was, “a call to action—a happening—a movement, in w h ich you are all involved. ” [Photo 1]

T he p e r f o r m a n c e s took place in a variety

of venues, from the train platforms to eateries and parks near the Metro lines. The event as a whole was unified by pre-de te rm ined commonalities in each piece, including: an object (in this case, an hourglass); a phrase (in this case an Italo Calvino quote, “Cities

like dreams, are made of desires and fears” (44); and the use of a language o th e r than S ta n d a rd A m e r ic a n E ng lish o r S pan ish somewhere within their play. This language r e q u i r e m e n t was a t r ib u te to the over 230 languages spoken in Los Angeles. The thinking was that the com m on phrase and o b je c t w o u ld he lp unify the six individual p ieces as one body o f w o r k w i t h o u t having to restrict the companies to a single story line. The theatre c o m p an ie s m an ag ed to s i m u l t a n e o u s l y embrace and challenge t h e s e g u i d e l i n e s , creating performances that featured gibberish as the language choice, a t e m p o ra ry ta t to o of an hourglass on a p e rfo rm ers abdom en

Guillermo Aviles-Rodriguez was born and raised in Watts and is now a Los Angeles based theatre scholar/artist. He is a Lecturer in California State University, Northridge’s Chicana/o Studies Department and is author of two commissioned Student Discovery Guides: En Un Sol Amarillo and Culture Clash's Palestine, New Mexico.

Photo 2: East LA Rep, LiUltimo Viaggio (2010). El Coyote (Juan E. Carrillo) reveals an hourglass.

Photo: Trevor Penna

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Photo 3: Watts Village Theater Company, Hub of the Universe Part 1 (2010). Dead Immigrant #1 (Jesus Castanos-Chima) and Dead Immigrant #2 (Angela Imperial) obstruct the audience’s path and hold up the Calvino quote in two languages other than English and Spanish. Photo: Trevor Penna

Photo 4: Watts Village Theater Company, Hub of the Universe Part 2. The cast (from left to right), Marcos Najera, Daniele Watts, Maria Pasquarelli, Angelo Francois, Will Rian and Deb Piver stand as an honor guard atop the Rainbow Bridge in Watts.

Photo: Sammy Corrado

[Photo 2], and the handing out of strips of paper with the Calvino quote. [Photo 3] Beyond this, all the groups used minimal props and costumes and refrained from erecting set pieces or using electrical devices as part of their show. These limitations came directly from Metro safety regulations.

Like the v a rio u s Los A ngeles co m m u n itie s that inspired them , the stories in M3 were starkly contrasting , yet unified th rough th e ir re la tionsh ip to the city as a whole. The conceit o f M3 was that each piece would serve as an entree into a specific area of Los Angeles and that the audience would get the opportun ity to glimpse the lives of people from various and diverse backgrounds, all of whom call the city home. In this way, the pro ject com pelled collaboration on multiple levels, between the actors and the com m unal space and the audience and location. [Photo 4] Some underlying them es com m on to all the pieces included the com bating of isolation (both geographic and ethnic), the desire to reinvent oneself, and a sense of individualism—all ideals with deep roots in every Los Angeles community regardless of ethnic or socioeconomic background.

Using theatrical work to bring com m unities and artists together is a strong thread running through many site-specific projects originated in Los Angeles, including the way o ther and m ore established site- specific thea tre m akers have w orked in the past. Canadian composer, w riter and environm entalist, R. M urray Qtd, for example, believes tha t his work is an attem pt to “break down” what he calls a “horrible division between the professional and am ateur, the entertainer and the entertained” (32).

Meet Me @Metro e x a m in e d th e co m p lex re la tio n sh ip s w ith in and betw een th e v a rio u s communities represented along the busy m etropolitan corridor connected by two of Los Angeles’s prim ary M etro lines. These same rail lines also pass through some of the most historically significant areas of the city. The plays com prising M3 worked to to uncover the num erous cultural layers that often exist in the small and uncelebrated communities flanking these rail stops. One such cultural uncovering happened during a performance by East Los Angeles Rep that took place in a re s tau ran t’s courtyard; the com pany provided free, freshly made salsa and quesadillas samples for the audience as part of the performance. The inclusion of food is a particularly popular element of site-specific work; it enhances the audience's experience of the work by adding both olfactory and gustational elements to the performance.

Other companies used their performances to examine the effects of the immigration that has taken place in

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these areas over the years. One piece commented on a neighborhood that currently houses working-class Mexican American immigrants, but was at one time the cultural center for African Americans. Overall, M3 examined movement (with and between) the communities that takes place via the Metro itself. This enclosed public space that people traverse, many out of necessity, informs their view of the varying communities that they pass through.

M3 also forged and developed relationships between artists of varying disciplines. This is in keeping with the theme of artistic and aesthetic diversity, but from an artistic standpoint. Similarly to the way various cultures throughout the city isolate themselves in their own neighborhoods, artists isolate themselves to their specific discipline. This is why M3 incorporated modern dance, puppetry, movement, and music in order to break down the isolationism that exists between artists of different disciplines in the city. Inextricably linked to movement and transit the show took place in a city where location is everything due to immense city sprawl and a lack of reliable transit options. Los Angeles has become a fragmented city where people hesitate to travel more than a few miles from where they live. As a result, people harbor pre-conceived and often incorrect notions about the communities

that exist only a few miles outside their everyday travel radius. This isolation from the rest of the city often disproportionately affects low-income communities.

M3 had the added benefit of combating L.A.’s ever prevalent “car culture,” and helped people to interact with one another- an essential component in hilly experiencing a site-specific performance. M3 turned the concept of isolation on its head by drawing audience members into interactions in a variety of rarely toured areas of the city. The drive to use site-specific theatre to hyper-sensitize audience members seems to stem from a desire to explore the word “theatre” as a set of events rather than as a physical space. Meet Me @Metro managed to get theatre out of the theatres and into people’s everyday lives. One of the best ways to remain relevant to future generations is to create work that inhabits some of the most unexpected places, where people, many of whom know nothing about live theatre, are engaging with the work before even knowing what it is. M3 was an attempt at counteracting the conveniences of the digital age; instead of remotely asking people to come to the theatre, practitioners of site-specific theatre are bringing theatre to people. [Photo 5]

The Car Plays

The Car Plays project was originally conceived by Paul Stein and first produced by Moving Arts Theater

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Photo 5: MooDoo Puppets, Subway Safari. Safari Sam (Todd McClain), Michael Dowell and LovBun (Felicity Doyle) calling attention to the entrance of a long lost friend. Photo: Sammy Corrado

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Photo 6: Moving Arts Theatre Company, #SANDY* (2012). Gabe (Chuma Gault) and Faith (Jacqueline Wright) talk in front of two audience members seated in the back seat.

Photo: Moving Arts Theater Company

order to keep the experience fresh and specific to each location. The com pany's way of w orking illustrates two key characteristics of site-specific work: its ability to fit itself to a location’s geographic, cultural, and aesthetic circumstances; and its avoidance of traditional presentation models in which each spectator sees the same perform ance from a different perspective, in exchange for each spectator witnessing only a part of the bigger performance. Site-specific art grants the spectator an experience of the art that is united w ith o ther perspectives but not uniform. This way of experiencing art lowers barriers to a perform ance and encourages audience participation. [Photo 6]

On 2 February 2012, I attended the outdoor, and rainy, closing night perform ance of The Car Plays in the plaza of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts; this p ro d u c tio n was p art of the inaugura l O ff C enter Festival. (For m ore see http://w w w .ocregister.com / articles/center-388068-hall-segerstrom .htm l.) As the performance began, ushers identified in the Press Kit as “car hops,” and handing out programs in the form

Photo 7: Moving Arts Theater Company, The Duo (2013). Batman/Carl (Michael Zlotnik) and Robin/Travis (Tony DeCarlo) work out their issues.

Photo: Moving Arts Theater Company

Company in 2006 in the parking lot of the Steve Allen Theatre in Hollywood. Since then, Moving Arts has remounted The Car Plays more than a half-dozen times, including a perform ance as part of RADAR L.A., an international festival of contem porary theatre held in downtown Los Angeles by REDCAT in collaboration with the Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival in New York. It is w orth noting tha t each rend ition of this concept is to some extent unique since new plays, directors, and actors mix in with veteran artists to work on a set of standard, or as Moving Arts calls them , trusted plays. These renditions facilitate the m ingling of old and new plays and collaborators in

Photo 8: Stephan Koplowitz, Red Line Time (2013). Ensemble: Rachel Butler-Green, Roya Carreras, Leslie Curtis, Nick Duran, Monica Mordaunt, Kerrie Schroeder, Alexandria Yalj, Sadie Yarrington performing in Union Station.

Photo: Scott Groller

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of “Notice to Appear” citations Photo 9: Stephan Koplowitz, Red Line Time (2013). Alexandria Yalj performs an, c . . ., improvisation in transit to the next metro station. Photo: Scott Grollerescorted groups of two to three r

people to one of five rows of parkedcars, five cars in each row. Theushers seated each group in the back seat of one of the five cars. The door closed, and the performance began unfolding in an intimate and personal way; each play was plays performed in the front seat of a car, no more than an arm’s reach away from the audience. Each play lasted approximately ten minutes, its end punctuated by a flurry of opening and closing doors m arking the conclusion of the other pieces.

The plays ranged from the existential to the sensational. Steve Lozier's We Wait, for example, featured two actors playing loyal dogs waiting for their owners in a gradually heating car and wondering if their masters will ever come back. Jessica Blaire Smith, on the other hand, set her play, The Duo, on the fateful day of the Comic Con costume contest. In the front seat, two friends in full Batman and Robin costume confronted the future of their dynamic duo.

[Photo 7] Overall the individual ten-minute plays stuck to a traditional structure, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. The project's greatest originality lay in the intimacy and interactivity of the performance.

The spectators extreme proximity to the performers in this event served to hyper-sensitize the audience and

Photo 10: Stephan Koplowitz, Red Line Time (2013). Ensemble: Rachel Butler-Green, Roya Carreras, Leslie Curtis, Nick Duran, Monica Mordaunt, Kerrie Schroeder, Alexandria Yalj, Sadie Yarrington. Photo: Scott Groller

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performers alike. The phenomenon may be observed in large-scale site-specific performances as well, and is one but is uncommon in conventional theatre. Hyper-sensitization most commonly occurs during site-specific large-scale pageant or procession-like performances, which encourage audience members to participate in the performance on multiple levels and in a variety of ways.

Many of The Car Plays pieces featured mature content not usually present in site-specific work, given the public context of its presentation. The cars in this case also provided a safe space for audiences to confront strong language, sexual gesticulations, and adult themes. Interaction with an audience was a key component of the show. In some plays objects and items were made available to audience members during the course of the intimate performance—including food, books, and pornographic magazines. The intimate format of The Car Plays contrasts with the form that transit-oriented site-specific work in Los Angeles usually takes, which as we have seen with Meet Me @Metro, is characterized by a higher level of interactivity (planned and accidental) and participation. The performance organization, for example, provided only limited accessibility to audience members with mobility concerns.

Red Line Time

Red Line Time was conceived and created by award­winning director, choreographer, media artist, and site- specific performance pioneer, Stephan Koplowitz. It was produced by the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and was presented in cooperation with Bauhaus Universitat Weimar, California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Over a two-day period, dancers performed transitory dance performances at all of the 14 Red Line Metro rail stations. [Photo 8] The performance was part of a public conference on urbanism and modernism organized in Los Angeles by the re:Streets project, which provided both an introduction to the new science of streets and a basis for discussion about the form of the future city. I attended the 6 April 2013 performance, which started at the historic Union Station; an audience member only needed a day pass to participate in the full presentation.

Red Line Time featured an octet of dancers—Rachel Butler-Green, Roya Carreras, Leslie Curtis, Nick Duran, Monica Mordaunt, Kerrie Schroeder, Alexandria Yalj, and Sadie Yarrington. The dancers all dressed in simple, brightly colored pants and shirts. They performed intricately choreographed movements that they then adapted to fit the dimensions of each of the different

spaces along the Red Line—including above-ground open-air plazas, the transitional space in front of Metro station entrances, and the underground space at various stations’ mezzanine-level ticketing areas. The stated goal of the performances was to “stay in sync with the train in both space and time” and to “take place within the strict schedule of the trains.” The performances aimed "to transform the Metro Red Line into a long distance performative space and invite the public to discover and re-discover a vital transportation artery of Los Angeles” (Zeller). [Photo 9] The performances highlighted site- specific theatre’s special ability to transmute a public space (in this case areas along the Metro Red Line) into areas of communal experience.

The perform ance covered all Red Line train stations. Eleven of these provided the audience with subterranean performance venues. The remaining three stations were outdoors, and performances were held just outside of the Metro entrances. The variety of sites gave the audience the ability to experience the performances from a plurality of points of view and from different perspectives. In some stations like Vermont/Santa Monica, the audience had the option of experiencing the performance from a moving escalator. [Photo 10] Other stations provided glass-encased elevators through which performers could be seen dancing along the Metro walkways.

The show was advertised as lasting “about 2 1/2 hours,” but actually lasted over five. This was not an issue, however, since audience members were invited to follow the performance for as long or as short a time as they wished; they were empowered to decide for themselves the length of their engagement. This audience fluidity illustrates the extraordinary level of freedom available to an audience in site-specific work. No audience is compelled to witness a performance within physical limitations such as sitting in the center of a crowded row of seats, or within the limitations of cultural expectations such as staying till the end of a conventional performance. During the performance I attended, a third of the audience was gone by the seventh station. This partial exodus proved that the performance did in fact match the ebb and flow of the commuting public since the audience for the performance left in the same way commuters do when they reach their destination. This commitment to audience empowerment was not without its drawbacks. It did require an extraordinary level of stamina on the part of the dancers and the spectators who wished to see the performance to the end—as witness the fact that only six of the original fifty audience members were left at the end of the performance I attended.

The performances were free for anyone with a Metro TAP card and $6 for people who needed to purchase a

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M e tro

day pass enabling them to enter and exit the Metro Red Line for the duration of the performance. Though the choreography was repetitive it was made vivid by the way dancers adapted to the architecture and interacted with audience members. One particularly powerful moment resulted from such an interaction between performer Rachel Butler-Green and a homeless man outside the 7th Street/Metro Center station. [Photo 11] The moment illustrates the unique power of performances in situ to juxtapose art with reality in concrete and unpredictable ways.

Meet Me @ Metro, Car Plays, and Red Line Time were all produced on minimal budgets. But rather than forcing artists and audiences to adapt to the practical economic realities of a shoestring budget, these projects all encouraged people to embrace and celebrate a stretching of the mind. The ideas began with the artists themselves, who are the masters of creating something from nothing, of shaping and molding ideas to turn them into a reality. Artists in turn challenged the audience to see things differently, to imagine objects acting out multiple functions and actors slipping in and out of various identities and time periods, all while catching a glimpse of the rich history of the area as they continue a physical and aesthetic journey. The collaborative nature of this work is a model for other types of collaborations with non-arts entities not only in Los Angeles but

also in other cities across America. These samples of creative collaborations provide positive examples of work between communities of diverse artistic discipline, ethnic background, social and political views, and geographic neighborhoods within a city. The three projects represent an increasingly important development in the staging of theatrical productions that may hold out hope for bringing an ever-dwindling audience back to the theatre not just in Southern California, but also beyond.

SOURCESCalvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. Trans. William Weaver. New

York: Harcourt, 1974.Press Kit for The Car Plays: In Every Car, There’s A Story. Peponides, Meropi. “Dramaturg Notes.” Meet Me @Metro

Commemorative Program. Los Angeles: 2 May 2010. N. pag.

Schafer, R. Murray. Qtd. in David Burgess, “Schafer’s Patria Three: The Cycle Continues.” Environmental and Site-Specific Theatre, ed. Andrew Houston. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2007), 28-37.

Zeller, Heidi. "Dance Performances at Red Line stations Friday and Saturday." http://thesource.metro.net/tag/ stephan-koplowitz/. 4 April 2013.

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