Appointment in Phoenix. Boardroom Video. This Room Is An Opportunity

This is the video from the Boardroom sequence at Appointment in Phoenix, 2014. Filmed by Ruben Tinoco. Written by Aaron Landsman. Performed by Deb Ostreicher.

This Room Is An Opportunity: Appointment in Phoenix

This Room Is An Opportunity: Appointment in Phoenix

A new version of Appointment launches for one weekend only in the heart of downtown Phoenix!

Thanks to ASU Gammage, where Aaron Landsman is artist in residence, the piece features amazing local actors, two local writers – James Garcia and Fatimah Halim – a remount of the 2010 Appointment by Jose Perez IV, and two new pieces by Aaron Landsman. We’re also trying a board room dance for the first time, as well as a greeter, Walmart-style. You should come see.

Here is how!

We only have thirteen seats per show – three shows per night. Enjoy!

New Appointment at ASU GAMMAGE in 2014!

ASU Gammage, where Aaron Landsman is a resident artist, is presenting an all-new version of Appointment next spring, in downtown Phoenix! This project will involve a boardroom dance, a waiting room drama and perhaps some unexpected bosses behind very large desks.

Stay tuned for more info as it arises.

Appointment in Detroit, via Skype

Last week I did something new with this project, thanks to the prodding and encouragement of my friends at EFTN and Wayne State University: I performed Appointment via Skype.

This kind of viral, open source, self-perpetuating thing is part of the big dream of Appointment, because it’s about making live art happen in offices with or without me (or ultimately, anyone who refers to himself as an artist.)

EFTN was in Detroit Rock City doing performances of their Appointment pieces, which they made with me this winter in Oslo and then brought to NYU in September (details about both of those trips are in posts below).

I had hoped to be there, but was in the middle of performing GATZ at The Public and couldn’t get away. The day before they did their showing, I got a call from Brendan McCall, the insanely talented and energetic leader of EFTN, asking if I’d try to do my own Appointment via Skype while theirs were going on live.

How could I say no? Jo and I put my son Harry to bed, finished dinner, and I logged in.

The piece I had made for the original round of Appointments I shepherded back in fall 2009 (see details in posts below) has something to do with a disgraced academic, and involves asking each viewer to read the piece to the next viewer. I figured it was worth a shot and since Wayne State would lend itself well to the situation, I had a professor there (Pegi Marshall, awesome) print out a copy of the script on their end, I uploaded some necessary audio“>necessary audio and we gave it a try. I had three appointments, and two of them did it for the next person. I sat back and watched.

What does this mean? Is the performer no longer necessary? Is this a revision of Grotowski’s essential ideal of “one performer, one audience member?” Could it have worked if I was not behind my computer in person, but was just transmitting a recording?

And what about this piece that is self-perpetuating? After it gets rolling, I didn’t even have to be there, because viewers could have just kept doing the script for each other in a loop. Is this a get-rich-quick scheme? Is this live performance without the performer? What is he on about?

Here are two photos, from my POV (Please ignore the messy desk. I don’t know who that belongs to). If anyone is reading this who was there, please feel free to add your thoughts.

Having just seen me perform my Appointment via Skype, Peter takes the bait and reads the text to Clark. The piece goes from mediated to live.

Clark and I discuss the Appointment he's just heard - he's in Detroit, I'm in Brooklyn.

Appointment / NYU

Here are photos from the most recent iteration of Appointment, which took places in the newly renovated offices of NYU’s Tisch School Of The Arts. Nine drama department students made new pieces. They were joined by five guest artists from Ensemble Free Theater Norway, who I worked with on an earlier version of the project over the winter in Oslo. (For evidence of that, see this post below).

Here’s a nice NY Times Article about the exciting trend of theater for one all over the world.

Works at Appointment / NYU were created by: Arya Dovachi, Katie Eisenberg, JC Flores, Mary Howe, Zachary Kislevitz, Natalia Lassalle, Jose Perez IV, Gina Stevenson, Andy Zou. Guest artists from Ensemble Free Theater Norway included: Dushinka Andresen, Lars Chrstian-Bredal, Christopher Pederson Cook, Ida Mailen Hagerup, Dina Naverud, Mette Fjerstad. Brendan McCall and Hank Willenbrink co-directed. Special thanks to NYU/UGD’s Production Director Chris Jaehnig and our amazing stage manager Itunu Balogun.

Appointment / NYU photos by Ida Mailen Hagerup, and Dina Naverud.

Clips of Appointment Oslo

These three pieces were created with the students performing, and credits appear at the top of each video. Thanks to Brendan McCall and TITAN for filming, hosting, and rewarding our curiosity.

And here’s a quick interview between Brendan and me about Appointment:

APPOINTMENT OSLO, PART 2

This is one of three offices where we will be performing Appointment here in Oslo. It’s part of SOS RASISME, and is in the middle of the city, about a block from the National Theatre, where a production of Romeo and Juliet is impending. There will be people working here, and people coming in for meetings, walking by and wondering what’s happening. And there will be micro-theater happening in the middle of it.

Bring your own coffee. Friday, 5 March. Noon-3PM.

Pilestredet 29A, 2 etg, 0166 Oslo.

Appointment Oslo, part one

I’m getting ready to go to Norway, and work with the intrepid students at the TITAN Theater School on an Oslo-specific version of Appointment.

This is the first Appointment since Prelude.

To get them started before I arrive, I gave the following set of instructions. They’ll be making Appointments at a working office downtown.

All pieces must involve:

• a mistaken identity
• a long silence (relative to the length of a piece)
• a moment of counting
• a show of hands
• a shift in time (ie at the end of the piece it is three years after the beginning, or at the end of the piece we realize we are 50 years in the past, which explains a lot)
• a big offer
• also, each piece should use at least one image or video on a computer screen.

Then here are 19 possible scores to use in making your pieces:

NYFA Current Article on Appointment

Andrea Kleine wrote this very nice article about Appointment at Prelude:

Why not read it?

Appointment At Prelude

On October 2nd, 35 Appointments were filled by audience members at the Prelude Festival in New York City. Performances were created by Brent Green, Daniel Alexander Jones, Sibyl Kempson and Aaron Landsman.

One of our favorite things about these pieces was that, by performing them in a working set of offices, we blurred the lines between art experience and work experience, audience member and performer, and office worker and creator.

Or maybe those lines are always being blurred – we just tried to put a spotlight on it. Because whenever two people are alone in an office, there is always something being performed.

In Aaron Landsman’s piece, audience members were asked at the end, via an audio recording, whether they’d be willing to read the piece to the next viewer, or whether they’d rather Aaron perform the piece himself. Almost no one turned down the opportunity to read. This led to some unexpected and sublime meditations: what happens when two curators read to each other about one taking the other’s job? How do you enable a viewer to capture the subtext of a piece without ever having seen it?

Here’s a link to what Aaron’s invitation to perform sounded like:

Appointment – Aaron Landsman\'s request

Here’s a photo of the ever-intrepid Morgan Jenness reading to the also-intrepid David Townsend.

And here is the amazing Stacey Robinson performing “Blondell Is Businessfied” by Daniel Alexander Jones. In which the unsuspecting viewer is given footwear advice, etiquette instructions, and a taste of Dean Lattislaw and her welcome gift.

Please stay tuned for more upcoming Appointments. We are planning to remount these works sometime soon.