I love cocoa, but I am not allowed to drink it. So when an actress asked the audience who wants the coco she made the great grief came upon me. But the rest of the “Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind” wasn’t so distracting, if one does not mind shouting every 2 minutes spectators – Neo Futurists know how to keep their public awake.
How do people having only one show for over twenty years could do that would be a great question. Since the cold opening night of December 1988 the performance is up and going and gather (almost) full house every week. The key is nearly absurd realitivism and ever-changing nature of the show.
The actors, being in addition writers and producers, took the phrase “life is theater” and decided to turn it the other way around. Although theater has always been depicting life with its various aspects and issued, Neos took it at the different level playing with physical reality instead of imaginative one. The “genuinity” of the enterprise is in the challenging philosophy of presenting the ideas in a most direct way possible. So, if a Neo wants to share a widespread problem of burning the kettles and the ways of managing it (setting up an iPhone 4s timer, for example), she makes the cocoa on the scene while making fun of her inability to prepare it carefully. However, the problems aren’t just personal – in attempt to match the news they respond to what’s happening in the world transforming the theater into the “living newspaper”1 as was the matter with their “talk” with some singer’s recording, when they highlighted the food issue of the US.
An attempt of keeping up with daily life is strongly related to the show’s changing nature. “Being real” goes farther than making cocoa or burning a real candle, it comes to having a traits of a real human, environment of around, which in turn means to be modifying over time. Having something as a backbone – which in this case is a whole idea of 30 plays in 60 minutes – a person is always modifying opinions and beliefs and so is the show. Each performance a dice is rolled to determine how many of the 30 pieces are to be replaced with new ones. This instability may be seen in other aspects of the T.M.L.M.T.B.G.B. such as stuff (new actors are recruited every year), place (the show is moving from one theater to another from time to time), and public.
New people are coming to see the show every week and so the orders of the plays performed is different as well: a name of each of 2-minutes productions is written on a list of paper and given a number, the papers are hanged then and audience shouts numbers it wants to see each time a play ends. “Expect unexpected” says the saying, and with such approach to the work Neo Futurists not only let the audience finally participate in what they watch, but also train themselves to adjust to the unforeseen. Finally, the theater is aimed not only at the idea of the play or viewers but actors too.
What is to note here is that audience is another part of their mission statement. Such non-traditional form of theater, which might be seen even ironical, may draw in people who usually not interested in that kind of art and thus broaden their minds. In fact, the last thing is related to all spectators, especially when they are breaking the boundaries of the usual comfort of not interacting with “personnel”. If audience participate and relate to what’s happening on the scene, – which transforms the auditorium into the scene as well – then the audience pay more attention to the issues revealed in front of them. The concepts presented become more “accessible” to even the most narrow-minded person possible.
Pricing is connected with this point as well. To make their shows available for the broader audience Neos work at the extremely low profit. Prices for their tickets are $11 plus roll of the dice, which again counts towards unexpected part of their beliefs. The donations, of course, are highly welcome. However, with the off-off Broadway kind of performance space, need to pay rent and always buy new stuff because of the realistic style they appear to work because of their interest and project loyalty, eagerness for gaining new and challenging experience.
Besides, such philosophical approach teaches people to be themselves. The best actors are said to have no personality, while being the part of NY or Chicago Neo Futurists enhances prices character and the ways of presenting one’s true self to the public. So, one does not need to pretend to be somebody else, a person just have to find a way to show him or herself in a creative way helpful to others in the understanding that self. When the notion is carried over to the real life it actually turns out to be a pretty important but lucking thing these days. We may see a play on it soon.
If one has any desire to see the show, it’s better to be enacted on some warm day. The Kraine Theater rented by NY Neo Futurist is really small, so when the tickets are bought people have to wait outside to be invited. The tickets need to be mentioned as well. There are two types of tickets: golden (plastic) coins and firemen, or spacemen. Coins and firemen are completely interchangeable and mean that a person bought a ticket online for the full $17 and doesn’t need to try to get the Fortune’s smile, while a person getting a firemen just assured to get a seat in the theater but will have to pay before coming in (they are typically used for “walk-inners”). The ticketing aspect encourages people to play or just have a discussion on the topic as well as raises the expectations from the to-be-seen.
Overall, Neo Futurists doing pretty well executing their ideology into life. They do what they believe in and that is the most attractive thing about the whole enterprise.
Reference and photographs:
1) http://www.nyneofuturists.org/
2) http://www.facebook.com/nyneofuturists?sk=photos
3) http://www.theatermania.com/broadway/theaters/kraine-theater_701/
Notes:
1. http://www.nyneofuturists.org/site/index.php?/site/mission/
