FIRST
Thursday August 17th, 2007: We read 'Don't Let Me Be Lonely - An American Lyric.', an astonishing multi-media book by a poet named Claudia Rankine. We were overwhelmed by the power of Claudia's work. We contacted her that day (we knew someone in the ‘Special Thanks’) to ask if she’d like to write something for the theatre. She thought about it. She said ‘yes’. A commission is made. What will it be?
MEANWHILE
Since 2005, The Foundry has been investigating the workings of New York City, hosting public dialogues and making theatre works (OPEN HOUSE) that explore how the city is changing and what its future could be. Some of these inquiries led us to explore the Bronx -- specifically the South Bronx, a neighborhood that was revitalized long before ‘gentrification’ became common parlance, and that has sustained a relationship to its history, its communities, its culture and its landscape that is uniquely distinct from the hundreds of other neighborhoods that make up our city.
THEN
Foundry Artistic Producer, Melanie Joseph proposes an idea to Claudia: what if we make a theatre piece about the Bronx that actually takes audiences on a bus traveling through the Bronx? Claudia, who we discovered was raised in the Bronx (in Eastchester), thought about it, and again said ‘yes’. She was interested in the prospect of returning to the Bronx - seeing it differently, seeing it as it might see itself, and creating a piece of writing that might respond to the density of its landscape.
NEXT
Over several months, Claudia and Melanie visit the Bronx, spending time with long time residents who have been present for more than one or two cycles of urban renewal and regeneration. Among them were: the graffiti artists of Tats Cru, members of Universes Performance Collective, Rosalba Rolon and Alvan L’espier Colon of Pregones Theatre, choreographer Arthur Aviles, Bill Aguado (the legendary Godfather of Bronx artists), Mr. Ortiz at the Hunt’s Point Wastewater Treatment Plant and Mrs. Ross who has lived in her house on Manida St. in Hunt’s Point for almost 70 years. They looked at pictures, listened to stories (some have become part of this piece). Mostly, people took them on tours, pointing out what to an outsider might have gone unnoticed -- parks that replaced buildings, buildings that replaced parks, the theatre where La Lupe and Celia Cruz held court that's now a church, the new development projects, the old ones, the good ones, the bad ones, and the complicated places that make up a neighborhood. As Melanie and Claudia listened, drove, walked and rode the buses of other tours, our route through the South Bronx emerged and Claudia began to write to it.
NEXT AND NEXT
While our route through the South Bronx has changed very little, the text has changed a lot - evolving almost as many times as the streets we drive through. As a poet, not a playwright, Claudia’s process through these drafts was to seek the truest voice for the piece, as opposed to the truest fiction of characters who might deliver it. Over the course of a year, we held three long and demanding workshops on the bus collaborating with many different actors -- live and recorded -- who helped us find things that worked and get rid of things that didn’t. The discoveries shifted continually - would this bit of route fulfill that text, would this new text require a left turn instead of a right one. How could we not point out this or that landmark, how can we leave out this or that story? Foundry Artistic Producer, Sunder Gangani was vital to this process, spending hundreds of hours on the bus and in conversation with Rankine and Joseph as Rankine’s evocative text built its relationship to what was (and wasn’t) going by outside the windows.
IN THE INTERIM
We found Mary Wallace who owns and drives our bus. We thank our lucky stars every block for her remarkable sensitivity to the road, traffic patterns and to the rhythm of Claudia’s text. At the same time, we found Casey Llewellyn, our utterly remarkable stage manager who keeps more details in the air than a juggler, with the spirit of a zen master. These two women were irreplaceable to our capacity to shape this experience.
FINALLY
Each juncture of developing PROVENANCE presented new challenges; the traditional questions that any theatre maker asks of a new work in development were suddenly (and sometimes hilariously) different. Issues of sightlines or timing became contingent on things like the duration of a stop light, the crawling traffic on a Yankee game day; or one way streets that went the “wrong” way. These practicalities -- all part of what constitute this neighborhood -- collaborated with us, allowing us to make what we hope will be an inimitable experience: an invitation to see a place differently, and to engage the poetics of its shifting definition with new inquiry and reverence.
NOW
Tuesday, August 18, 2009. Rehearsals begin. And PROVENANCE is challenged anew by the latest collaborators to join the company -- Shawn Sides (co-director), Geoff Abass (sound), Kell Condon (video), Raul Casillo and Randy Danson (recorded performers) and Sarah Nina Hayon (live performer). The bus has left the station, welcome aboard.