Take Care
Opening Night: December 1, 2015
Closing: January 25, 2016
Theater: The Flea Theater
“Take Care” is a participatory performance that investigates the ways we respond to present and imminent danger. This evening-length performance gathers and reconfigures our personal language around emergency preparedness, abandonment, and consolation. Niegel Smith writes: “I wanted to make a piece for our resident acting company, The Bats, that engages them as interpretive and generative artists. I invited my long-time collaborator Todd Shalom (Elastic City) to create a performance that explores The Bats’ most urgent personal and global concerns. So, we’re inviting theatergoers inside a vicious hurricane — a perfect storm to expose the ways we take care of and neglect one another.”
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December 11, 2015
Anyone with inflamed performance-anxiety issues may want to think twice before attending “Take Care,” a willfully weird, highly interactive theater piece that uses a series of playful but ominous sketches and games to explore nervous-making aspects of the world today. You can choose to be a mere “voyeur,” as opposed to a “featured participant” (with a solo action or bit of dialogue) or a “group participant” (you have the company of at least two others). But even those party poopers who choose to be voyeurs — traditionally known as audience members — are expected to participate minimally in the show. The production, written by Todd Shalom and Niegel Smith, and directed by Mr. Smith, is presented in the basement of the Flea Theater. As you enter this dark area with folding plastic chairs arrayed on both sides of a central playing space, you choose your assignment. All non-voyeurs are given scripts describing what they should do and exactly when.
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