PHASE 1
The first version of this piece took place in 2000 at a chashama window on 42nd st. at Broadway. I was asked by my then boss, Anita Durst, to create some sort of performance work for the great window display they had at the chashama 135 space.
Enthused, I gathered a group of performers and began rehearsing a piece in the window display. It was totally frustrating and unsatisfying. I felt that no matter what we did in there, Bergdorf Goodman’s window was going to be better, more polished, more beautiful, more interesting, and the context of a group of people performing in the window was boring.
Perplexed, I sat in the window one day with my buddy and longtime collaborator Ryan Bronz and it occurred to us that what's fun about the window is being in it and looking out at the city. Inverting the context of the audience/performer relationship opened up a whole world of ridiculous un-ending possibilities. The rest was a piece of cake. The event ended up having 40 performers and an accidental cast of police officers, busses, taxis, local business people and one thousand tourists.
The piece we created was called PHASE I - Selling Out to the Bare Walls. Here's a little excerpt:
