Staking It Out

STAKING IT OUT Susan Mosakowski The Tight Fit,La Mama E.T.C., New York WhenI was asked to create a site-specific work for the Padua Hills Playwrights' Festival I was eager to have the opportunity to find new locations for my work. Because I am drawn to artifice, outdoor theatre never appealed to me; however, in this instance I was challenged by the prospect because I wanted to further my ideas about "the site of the play" in both artifical and natural environments. This was not an issue of outdoor locations versus indoor locations. Rather, it was an issue of "where the play lives," conceptually and physically. I was interested in exploring the relationship between the physical location of the play and the text. In my process, finding the play has become the articulation and definition of the space of the play to the extent that the secrets of the play lay in the physical space. What this means is that the spiritual, emotional, and intellectual boundaries of the play are physically represented on the stage, making the set an essential conduit which facilitates actions, determines choreography, and echoes the text. It is an empowered entity and an active participant in the making of the play. It is not an afterthought . It is not a backdrop. It is not something "designed" for a play. I am not a set designer. I am a playmaker whose plays must be embedded in the physical construction of the stage in order to speak. The location of the play has always been critical to me and often is the primary generator for my workfueling ideas and bringing to light the visual landscape of the play. Often I can't get started until I have located the characters in a specific place. At times I grapple with this alone, or I collaborate with other artists to help realize the space. For example, in Ice Station Zebra,a play about Howard Hughes, I was unable to build the play until I could locate Hughes in a landscape. Everything I knew about Hughes pointed to a man, who in later years, was in the act of selfembalming -I found him in a pharoah's tomb. From there, I was able to write and direct my Hughesian character through the hermetic neither world of a pyramid. In The Rotary Notary and His 44 0 Hot Plate based on Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass, architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio created the set by distilling Duchampian ideas to the principle of a hinge. Half of the play was seen in plan perspective by means of a large overhead mirror. The other half took place-in normal perspective-in front of a rotating panel. The play was about Duchamp and illusions; the play had to be centered in an apparition. The set worked as a pivot-back and forth-from illusion to reality. The Tight Fit, recently presented at La Mama E.T.C. in association with Creation Production Company, began at The Padua Hills Playwrights' Festival in Los Angeles in an empty dirt lot which was backed by a twelve foot high wall of cinderblocks. Blazing hot and dusty during the day, the cinderblock wall created a monochromatic horizon line across the sky. At times the lot seemed to blanket my senses in a kind of sensory white noise. At night, this horizon featured a vista of stars. It was a site that could prompt a Bernard Hermann score. At this point a play did not exist, only the idea that there would be a play. The hollow that I had carved out in my mind for that thought found a natural fit within this lacuna. At first it seemed unlikely that this empty lot would provoke any ideas for a play. However, I chose it, and I would have to give it a name and address. Like the Japanese proverb which states that to pick up a rock cast upon the beach is the same as giving it a name; selection implies difference, and ultimately, identity . Gazing upon this site led me to a big zero; the absence in the landscape seemed to parody my internal...