PLAY: A Play (Test Run), 2024, performance, 60 minutes
PLAY: A Play is an improvisational framework designed to guide participants in making spontaneous choices in concert with others while navigating intrapersonal freedom. PLAY takes the form of a game with precise parameters aimed at keeping the performers in a continuous state of openness, allowing for possibility, unrepeatability, fluidity and unknown outcomes. It features four players and one referee. PLAY is never the same play twice.
The game is divided into multiple Acts, each governed by its own set of often bizarre rules. These rules are enforced by the Referee, who also serves as the Narrator, Commentator, Critic, Mumble Police, Tie Breaker, and Time Keeper. The rules of each Act are gradually revealed through the way the players follow and respect them, seemingly without question. This absurd logic invites us to ask: What is genuinely arbitrary? What can we not escape? What absurdities do we blindly accept in our own lives?
The content of PLAY evolves with each performance, shaped by the immediate thoughts and emotions of the players. Rather than competing, they work together as a team—physically, mentally, and emotionally—functioning as a constantly evolving organism. Their aim is to honor their unique, individual selves while deeply tuning in to one another in the process.
With: Gregory Barnett, Jessica Emmanuel, Andrew Lush, Emily Mast, Lisa McNeely & Aramazd Stepanian
Dramaturgy: Terrence Luke Johnson
Video: Matthew Savitsky, Yehuda Duenyas
Edit: Noa Shearer