Etiquette

Sunday night Todd surprised me with a really interesting treat: Etiquette, which can be described in part as a private performance in a public space. No, this is not a lap dance as my friend Kimberly suggested when I told her about it on Monday. It’s a private play in which we were both the actors and the audience. We sat at a table in the corner of a Ukrainian restaurant in the east village and each donned a pair of headphone, which fed us our lines, direction, and much of the play’s narration. In that small space we were given props and lighting, both of which were used to great effect to tell the story of a prostitute and an old man who meet in a café in Paris as well as a sad story-within-the-story.

At first I felt a little self conscious, aware that we were the only ones participating in this amidst plenty of other people just out for dinner. Quickly, though, the other diners fell away as I became wrapped up in the experience. It was extraordinarily unique, and though it occurs every half hour—same characters, same lines, same story--, the experience felt remarkably personal. Because our participation was so complete no other actors/audiences will ever experience it just the way we did, just as we didn’t experience what any who came before us had felt.

The theatre behind this, The Foundry Theatre, is next doing a show called Open House. They’ll perform it 24 times, each time in a different private home in a different New York City apartment. Very cool.