I love cocoa, but I am not allowed to drink it. So I felt very disturbed by this fact, when an actress asked if someone wants some. But the rest of the “Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind” wasn’t so distracting, if one doesn’t mind the fact that public shouted “curtain” every 2 minutes or so, – Neo Futurists know how to keep their public awake.
The TMLMTBGB is running for about 20 years already, but how do Neo Futurists keep the audience interested? 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 approach of making everything “real” 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 issues, Neos realized the idea from quite a different point of view and decided to play with physical reality instead of imaginative one. The veracity 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 stage while making fun of her inability to prepare it carefully. However, they display not only personal issues but also those important to the bigger groups of people. One scene they prepared was the response to some song: they held a dialogue with it highlighting the US’ food issue.
An attempt to keep 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 characteristics of real humans and the world around. To implement that, they have to remember about one of the fundamental elements of our worlds– to be in the process of change. 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 staff (new actors are recruited every year), place (the moves from one theater to another from time to time), and public.
New people are coming to see the show every week and so the order of the plays performed is different each time: a name of each of 2-minutes productions is written on a list of paper and given a number, the papers are hung up then and audience shouts out some numbers it wants to see each time a play (each scene is a different play and cannot be associated with any shown) ends. “Expect the unexpected” instructs 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 as even ironic, 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 participates and relates to what’s happening on the scene, – which transforms the auditorium into the scene as well – then the audience pays 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 while having almost no profit from the enterprise. Prices for their tickets are $11 plus roll of the dice, which again counts towards unexpected part of their beliefs. Donations, of course, are highly welcome. However, they barely help to cover the costs: the space is too small to be occupied by more than 40 people, the rent is high, and because of the endeavor to keep everything real they have to buy new things foe each performance.
Besides, such philosophical approach teaches people to be themselves. The best actors are said to have no personality, but Neos argue that they have to have one. So, one does not need to pretend to be somebody else, a person just has to find a way to show him or herself in a creative way to interest the public in getting to know that person and, most importantly, his/her personality. When the notion is carried over to real life it actually turns out to be a pretty important but missing thing (we may see a play on this topic 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 who 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 is just assured of getting 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/
