Everyone was impatient, in other words, to deconstruct the idea of a “better future” as much as to answer the question directly. After their advance, Utopian hotline Questions his own invitation, wondering at some point if humans even exist in a shared present or future.
“If you look at me, you see me now?” Ask Kayla Asbell, another Boston race artist, looking at the public. (The whole is completed by Denis Butkus and Michael Littig.) “Not really, because the light takes time to come from me. So you see me as I was a few nanoseconds.”
Utopian hotline Was organized for the first time in Mitu580 in Gowanus, the permanent house of the company since 2018. A multi-use place built for interdisciplinary experiment, Mitu580 has also hosted the finalist live of Pulitzer Circle shock And, more recently, the crazy celebration of the culture of the shopping center 1-800-3592-113592of the new child in the whole.
Mitu recently resigned from their lease on space until 2034. Their last world premiere in the MITU580 was (Saint) blood,, A horrible meditation on madness and the murder in which they rebuilt the film of Alejandro Jodorowsy in 1989 Santa Blood With a living sound landscape and torrents of false blood. Other recent Mitu productions include stay,, An audio rumination on war, and the time of Victor L. Cazares American visions (TV)Co-presented with New York Theater Workshop in 2022.
For Utopian hotlineThe first in 2021 played for 30 public members per night due to capacity restrictions while the theater returned slowly, the MITU580 was adorned with succulent pink carpet. The pink carpet has since become essential to the identity of the show: it has been kept for the later tour of El Paso, Texas, Mesa, Arizona and Manama, Bahrain, and now for Boston's race.
This time, throwing the carpet was the least of the practical challenges that the Mitu was faced. Punching the different technical systems of Utopian hotline And the planetarium organized several workshops on site. Project live video flows on the dome has taken the most troubleshooting. The show must also be able to load and go out quickly between morning performance and evening, because the planetarium has other programs throughout the day.
Thanks to the arrangement of the concentric seats of the Planatarium, none of the intimacy of the room is lost in this new unusual space.
“Everyone faces the middle, so it's a very” around campfire “that lends itself to narration,” said Leblanc.
Thought the moment of debate and reflection inspired by the forties around a better future that inspired Utopian hotline It looks like this has faded in the intermediate years, according to Sanborn, which only makes the spectacle more essential today.
“Is it possible to bring more curiosity to our collective conversations, in the middle of all our differences?” said Sanborn. “Curiosity with each other, the world and our future on our planet?”
By bringing together 200 people in a community research space, Polendo hopes that the spectacle itself achieves this objective – and, by its own existence, offers a answer to the most existential question of all.
“This question of” are us alone “is no longer intimidating, but in fact a strengthening, because the form of the program itself offers confirmation that we are not,” said Polendo. “If nothing else, you are not alone in asking these questions.”
Joey Sims (he / him) wrote for Rail Brooklyn, Vulture, Into, Queerty, Theatremania, New York Theater Guide and TDF. Joey is a former student of the National Institute of Critics of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and manages a theater substitution called Transitions.
