First NY Showing!

​We are fresh from our first NY showing, an open studio production called On the Flip Side. This piece was based on group explorations inspired by postcards. More on the show here!
 
Some insight into the making of this project: This fall, we were working with objects for a while (which was SO fun and yielded some crazy shit) - and we then moved to using postcards as inspiration. The interesting contrast was that objects are super wide open to interpretation - like, if someone had a rock that they brought in, everyone present would create a totally different story about that rock. But postcards, because of their specificity of image/text/context, have a different filter for interpretation. At some point we took a vote on which things to use as inspiration for a showing, and postcards narrowly won... On the Flip Side was developed in about 6 weeks by three BrickaBrack subgroups: Rock, Paper, and Scissors.
 
Some of the pieces were inspired from the cards' images, some from what was on the back of them, or our personal experience around receiving the card / who sent it. We played with movement/text/ theatrical structure/imaginative leaps inspired by the images on the cards, or the writing, or the artist behind the card's creation. One of my favorite collaborations was with a self portrait museum card by an artist named Darren Booth. For ten minutes we sat and wrote poems about the artist based on the image alone and no other instruction. The resulting piece, "I am Darren Booth!" was hysterical and amazing.
 
Here's a pic of some of the cards we were playing with:

​Amy & I created these programs below, which mirrored the design of a card we based a piece on (you can see it in the top right of the pic above, actually) - one that I had received from a "Postcard Machine" in 2007 - a vending machine an artist had developed, that delivered postcards at $1 a pop. Its actually a pouch that we inserted a postcard in, then during a particular piece in the show, the audience was instructed to remove the postcard and fill out the back with their dream life - and we'd mail it to whomever they wanted to send it to!

​Some audience commentary about the show:

• Very funny! ~ Maria
• So brave to leave sequence up to luck - and I can't wait to receive a postcard from myself! ~ Emily
• Seemed like you all had been working together for years. Beautiful flow, humor, honesty, movement - LOVED it! ~Meghann
• So fun and moving. It was a wonderful experience! ~ Rachel

 
I'm not sure if we'll continue working in this postcard-inspired format, but it was a really fun way to introduce our work to NYC audiences.
 
Thank you for reading!
 
~ GG