We Are Theatre [And So Can You]
October 26 at 11:00pm until October 27 at 11:00pm
2209 E. 33rd Street. Minneapolis MN 5540
24 Hour Theatre Performance
starring Samantha Jo Johns and George David McConnell
We have been writing to each other...
for an hour a week...
for several weeks.
We will read this writing live and in person
with the audience of you
for 24 hours.
This was directed by no one.
Stop on by. [for a little or a lot]
2209 E. 33rd Street. Minneapolis MN
We will be in the garage.
[http://goo.gl/maps/TOxVz]
Menu = Snacks
Photo Credit: Marcel Antunes, Tom Lloyd, Nick Oachs, Erin Search-Wells, Justin Spooner
FACEBOOK INTERVIEW??
Ben Kreilkamp - Hey George I was thinking 3 paragraphs. One on the conception of the idea, what it was and how it came about. Two on the experience of the doing it, the performance and the time in the garage. Three on your reflections afterwards on what it meant to you, whether from others' responses or your own thoughts. So that could be three sentences or more, to any length really.Like · · See Friendship
George McConnell 1.)the conception, or the idea came about like many things that come about in the way that Sam and I work. We had a vague idea and we started to follow it. The vague idea here began with me proposing to Sam a daily writing practice. That we would commit to writing for an hour a week for several weeks, just generating text. The hour could be divided in a week however we each saw fit (sitting for one hour and writing straight through, ten minutes here, ten minutes there...) and that we would not show this writing to each other for several weeks. We would maybe do something with it, and maybe not. I imagined that once we had a bunch of text generated (a couple months worth) we would look back over it and start a kind of editing process...I like these 2 words together, I like this entire page, etc...and start sort of refining what we had written into something...so we started the practice and didn't know what we'd do with it, exactly. Then sam got asked to do the 9x22 piece, and i was maybe going to do it with her (i mean, we discussed it and so i was tangently involved, but not as directly as i was maybe going to be at one point)...when she was conceptualizing that, we decided we'd read the reading and see if it would be used at all...it didn't make sense for that, and we were reading it much sooner than we had agreed at the start...so then sam said, "i think we should just read it. all of it." we then continued writing for weeks (we quit 2 weeks before the reading) that added up to 14. an hour of writing a week. we would not edit, we would not find the best bits, we were just going to take the writing and read what we had...over 24 hours...something about sitting there and enduring it seemed appealing to us. also, our work is typically not focused on text, and so we had a glut of text. also, typically, sam and i don't perform. so this became a project that was different from our usual ways of working. Sam and I performing, and it was just text...I mean, sort of just text...just text and the difficult task of sitting in one place for 24 hours.
2 hours ago · Like
George McConnell 2.)the performance was hard. that's what i would say. i was prepared for the difficulty of staying awake for 24 hours, and the strain on the throat, i was not prepared for the strain on my eyes from reading. at around 4am in the morning when it was just sam and i reading to a sleeping John Bueche, my eyes were so heavy, so tired, i didn't think i could go on. I asked sam if we could stop. just quit. she said no, she kept it going. i leaned on her (this is often a part of our work...when one of us needs to lean on the other, the other supports and then knows a time will come when they are the support and get leaned on...) and we kept going. we were rarely alone in the garage (not counting the online viewers)...there was maybe an hour spread out of the 24 where we were alone. of course, 4 of those hours our only company was a sleeping Bueche, but he was there with us, and he would occasionally, wake up and interact with us...he would mumble "frog face fuck face..." which was a line from the text...it was great to see people arrive in their own time...many people came alone...i think this is different to most theatre where people go with a companion...we had many solo spectators...people stayed on average for about 30 minutes...i think that is about what i expected...it got really cold...our faces and hands were hurting from the cold...it got hard, really hard again the last 3 hours...we were tired of reading our words, we were sleep deprived...we wanted it to end...there were strange moments where people we were writing about happened to be there when we were reading about them...this was really emotionally charged at one point...there was a section where we repeated the phrase "in the future you will"...and this was when baby Oliver was there...so it was like we conjuring a future for the baby...we couldn't have planned this...it was great to sit next to sam...it always is...i was afraid i would break down and smoke because she smoked throughout, but i did not...it was hard...it was something...
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1
George McConnell 3.)i don't know what it meant to me...we wanted to do it, and we did it. we opened a space for an event that allowed a different sort of audience interaction. we made it through it...we have follow through...i don't know if anyone cared about it...it felt kind of self-indulgent, but also, we didn't charge admission, and people could come and go as they pleased, so maybe it was self-indulgent, but there we were living and dying in a space for 24 hours...i don't know. Samantha Johns and i will probably keep reflecting on it for a while. What it was, what it meant, how we think it went...it happened. We did it. It was hard. We will do other things.
2 hours ago · Like
George McConnell 1.)the conception, or the idea came about like many things that come about in the way that Sam and I work. We had a vague idea and we started to follow it. The vague idea here began with me proposing to Sam a daily writing practice. That we would commit to writing for an hour a week for several weeks, just generating text. The hour could be divided in a week however we each saw fit (sitting for one hour and writing straight through, ten minutes here, ten minutes there...) and that we would not show this writing to each other for several weeks. We would maybe do something with it, and maybe not. I imagined that once we had a bunch of text generated (a couple months worth) we would look back over it and start a kind of editing process...I like these 2 words together, I like this entire page, etc...and start sort of refining what we had written into something...so we started the practice and didn't know what we'd do with it, exactly. Then sam got asked to do the 9x22 piece, and i was maybe going to do it with her (i mean, we discussed it and so i was tangently involved, but not as directly as i was maybe going to be at one point)...when she was conceptualizing that, we decided we'd read the reading and see if it would be used at all...it didn't make sense for that, and we were reading it much sooner than we had agreed at the start...so then sam said, "i think we should just read it. all of it." we then continued writing for weeks (we quit 2 weeks before the reading) that added up to 14. an hour of writing a week. we would not edit, we would not find the best bits, we were just going to take the writing and read what we had...over 24 hours...something about sitting there and enduring it seemed appealing to us. also, our work is typically not focused on text, and so we had a glut of text. also, typically, sam and i don't perform. so this became a project that was different from our usual ways of working. Sam and I performing, and it was just text...I mean, sort of just text...just text and the difficult task of sitting in one place for 24 hours.
2 hours ago · Like
George McConnell 2.)the performance was hard. that's what i would say. i was prepared for the difficulty of staying awake for 24 hours, and the strain on the throat, i was not prepared for the strain on my eyes from reading. at around 4am in the morning when it was just sam and i reading to a sleeping John Bueche, my eyes were so heavy, so tired, i didn't think i could go on. I asked sam if we could stop. just quit. she said no, she kept it going. i leaned on her (this is often a part of our work...when one of us needs to lean on the other, the other supports and then knows a time will come when they are the support and get leaned on...) and we kept going. we were rarely alone in the garage (not counting the online viewers)...there was maybe an hour spread out of the 24 where we were alone. of course, 4 of those hours our only company was a sleeping Bueche, but he was there with us, and he would occasionally, wake up and interact with us...he would mumble "frog face fuck face..." which was a line from the text...it was great to see people arrive in their own time...many people came alone...i think this is different to most theatre where people go with a companion...we had many solo spectators...people stayed on average for about 30 minutes...i think that is about what i expected...it got really cold...our faces and hands were hurting from the cold...it got hard, really hard again the last 3 hours...we were tired of reading our words, we were sleep deprived...we wanted it to end...there were strange moments where people we were writing about happened to be there when we were reading about them...this was really emotionally charged at one point...there was a section where we repeated the phrase "in the future you will"...and this was when baby Oliver was there...so it was like we conjuring a future for the baby...we couldn't have planned this...it was great to sit next to sam...it always is...i was afraid i would break down and smoke because she smoked throughout, but i did not...it was hard...it was something...
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1
George McConnell 3.)i don't know what it meant to me...we wanted to do it, and we did it. we opened a space for an event that allowed a different sort of audience interaction. we made it through it...we have follow through...i don't know if anyone cared about it...it felt kind of self-indulgent, but also, we didn't charge admission, and people could come and go as they pleased, so maybe it was self-indulgent, but there we were living and dying in a space for 24 hours...i don't know. Samantha Johns and i will probably keep reflecting on it for a while. What it was, what it meant, how we think it went...it happened. We did it. It was hard. We will do other things.
2 hours ago · Like