January Archive Highlight; “One Show At A Time”

A heads up: this post contains photos and discussion of the fires in Los Angeles. If you were affected or are otherwise still reeling from this month, I invite you to consider reading something else today, and returning whenever feels comfortable. This post will still be here later, and so will you.

A few weeks ago, I was slated to speak at Next Stage in a salon discussion titled “Big Ideas on Limited Resources.” The panel was to be packed with some of my favorite artists in the immersive space, and moderated by my dear friend and collaborator Jessica Creane. They would doubtless all have had brilliant and beautiful things to say, and I would probably have been very helpful stacking chairs afterwards. I had hoped to earn my keep by chiming in on the advantages of low-throughput, low-overhead work that scales through repetition. 

I’ve found that, if you lower the barriers to doing just one performance, you will be amazed at the things you can accomplish one show at a time. Over the course of weeks, months, and even years, those performances can accumulate into something larger, deeper and more detailed than you ever imagined.

This is how I launched The Telelibrary and Undersigned, and I found it made the process of conceiving, play testing, developing, and refining eminently more achievable.

As it turns out, this wisdom applies to starting again as well.

On January 6th I was scheduled to depart from Philadelphia on an early morning flight to Los Angeles, and I arrived at the airport with equipment and materials for 79 performances of Undersigned. The first real snowstorm of the season left me instead delayed until late that night, and it wouldn’t be until nearly three in the morning of January 7th before I reached my destination. I had arranged to spend most of the tour at my godmother’s home of thirty-five years in Altadena. Growing up in Topanga Canyon, we often made the trek across the city to visit, and the house that pre-dated my existence felt as familiar as ever— though I had never heard the Santa Ana winds blow so strong as they did that early morning when I arrived.

Within 15 hours, we lost power. A few hours after that, with no power and no reception for alerts or updates, we made the decision to evacuate, with just enough room for dogs and people in the car. All four of us reached safety, but by the morning of the next day we would learn that my godmother’s block had been caught in the Eaton Fire, and her home had burned clear to the ground.

My godmother and the dogs were safely relocated, and after short-term provisions have since found a long-term home for the time being as we navigate the many small bureaucratic disasters that come in the wake of larger catastrophes. 

For my part, I was caught by many dear and kind hands, and with the immediate urgencies addressed, I was left to attend to my own situation: about 90% of the equipment and materials for Undersigned were in that home, in two suitcases which I had placed in a final, frantic, and ultimately futile burst of optimism in the bathtub. Our first performance was scheduled to begin in 2 days.

I would love to say I sprang into instant and decisive action, but the truth is I felt battered and at a loss for enough information to make most any decision. At the time I didn’t even know for certain the fate of my suitcases, and while common sense and a producer’s instinct told me there was little cause to hope, I did keep telling myself that Harrison Ford had done pretty well in that refrigerator…

Pictured: Not an Indiana Jones movie. Instead, the sight of what was once the home more closely resembled Kaitlin Pomerant’s, On the Threshold

Some decisions were easy to make. We emailed the upcoming participants to offer no-questions-asked refunds. Many accepted — a few only minutes before their appointment as they suddenly received evacuation notices for their homes — but the majority held their appointments, and the Standby List stepped forward to claim empty spots. So long as it could be done safely, I wanted to honor those Appointments; I thought we could be a place people could use to begin making meaning of what we were going through. “When are you coming home?” asked one friend over text; “is it all cancelled?” I texted back; “Nah - started this shit for one person, one at a time. Just gonna rebuild it the same way.” In saying it, I suddenly felt certain it was true.

Daunting as that was, I assured myself that I could use the past 4 years as a road map. The heart of Undersigned lives in language, and most of that has never really lived on a page — the most important words spoken always belong to a participant — so we knew the show would be able to get a pulse, if we had a body to carry it. And we didn’t have to start entirely from scratch. My carry-on had become my go-bag as I had fled Altadena, and thanks to my long standing latent paranoia about checked luggage, it held the most essential 10% of the show’s props and materials.

Through cancellations and reschedulings, we cleared the first day of Appointments. That gave us one day to source materials, and one day to install and rehearse, before the shows began. In less than 4 days of prep and performance, we retraced almost every production phase from the past 4 years.

We playtested — adjusting the venue layout to explore new opportunities and solutions, and discovering which of the lost materials were most essential for reproduction. Most of the dearest items were things we handmade or sourced second hand, but anything orderable was ordered. I recalled the rough shape of what our kit used to look like — the stand-in materials we used to use before we found our perfect solutions — and accepted these compromises for this one show.

In this sudden remounting of a 2022 version of the show, the most glaring absence was that of history in the room. Undersigned benefits from accumulating materials over time, and after nearly 300 performances, these remnants of past shows had become dependable markers to elevate and expand a participant’s own story, and create moments that hold them and make them feel connected to others. That night of those first playtests I prioritized taking surviving materials on hand to rebuild a home for those traces in the piece, and over the next few days we slowly rebuilt towards our previous scale of presentation.

Our first full day of shows presented our next challenge: speed. Back in the Autumn of 2022, we launched the show doing 6 shows a day, with longer breaks between shows. We unlocked our current 8 show schedule with tighter windows between performances by preparing and switching between alternating sets of props and materials. Now I was back to one of everything. This forced us to rewrite the script for what actors do “off-stage,” and my breaks became rehearsals running the choreography of refilling boxes.

In this again, I benefited from the “one show at a time mindset”. We were supported by the years of accumulated tricks, tactics, and solutions I had built with my actors as we tinkered with all the little moving pieces of a show, smoothing down jagged edges and developing alternatives over time. A gradual pace of development had helped me avoid large up-front costs, but it was also a cadence that let improvement seep into the smaller nooks and crannies of this piece. At its previous height, Undersigned demonstrated my level of care and thought to a participant in almost every place they could look.

By January 12th we were solidly on the road back to that mountain top, having performed 19 shows, and found a high-functioning flow. I could envision an alternate version of Undersigned that had never found speed through duplicating materials, but the precarity of having no replacements available weighed heavily on me. In one performance, a participant blithely asked if they could keep a prop they were holding.With difficulty I managed to only scream in panic internally before coolly explaining this wouldn’t be possible. What if they hadn’t asked, and had just pocketed it and walked away?  

There are limitations and risks to the “one show at a time” mindset. With a short event horizon, it’s easy to focus exclusively on improving the participant experience by leaning on the resilience and grit of the performers, producers, directors, and everyone else working the show.; If “one show at a time” is a thought completed by “- at any cost,” you’ll quickly find you and your team burning out.

Duration and sustainability become achievable once you allow yourself to think at scale. My time in the FORGE NYC Fellowship had helped carve out time to address both of those limitations on the production end, reimagining the tools and processes I used to announce, schedule, budget, release, and operate the box office for performances. Scalable frameworks and infrastructure allowed me to grow one show at a time into one appearance at a time — and eventually, to even plan one tour at a time. 

It’s been a strange, difficult, and humbling month restarting that process of holding gradually larger time frames for the show all over again. More than anything, it has been a forceful reminder that none of it is possible alone, not even one performance. When the process was gradual, I was able to spread my asks out over time, minimizing the discomfort of requesting and receiving support. This second time I had to speed-run, and the incredible scale of kindness, generosity and care I received was at times uncomfortable. Our venue partners at Hatch were flexible, communicative, and rallied with us. Family, friends and collaborators heard about our situation and sent financial, logistical, and material resources , which combined with your support through Patreon made everything above possible. 

Now, I’m finally back home in Philadelphia and have found at least the majority of my feet underneath me. The next phase of replacing what was lost will be differently difficult — slower, and less subsidized by adrenaline. It will also present a chance to re-examine all those solutions that came out the first “one at a time” round, and to imagine what might be possible for the next performance.

Always imagining the next One helps me keep me inspired, and keeps me moving through both the easy months and the Januaries of the world. 

I could also probably stand to take a nap now, and will look into that.