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This Is Not a Theatre Company
This Is Not A Theatre Company: Mission and History

This Is Not A Theatre Company (TINATC) was founded in 2013 by director Erin

B. Mee and playwright Jessie Bear. TINATC is dedicated to the creation of

performances that stretch the conventional understanding of theatre by

challenging traditional ideas about “plays”; specifically, the relationships they

create between performer, performance, and audience. By setting our

productions in nonconventional theatre spaces (from an actual pool to the Staten

Island Ferry), inviting audiences to participate in the live creation of our “plays”,

and experimenting with different media sources to disseminate our content,

TINATC aims, always, to playfully and fearlessly expand the definition of theatre

to encompass more unconventional ends. Our hope is that widening the borders

of such an essential artistic form will ultimately bolster its ability to reach wider

audiences, spread more varied and diverse messages, and continue to adapt to

the needs of modern communities.

Pool Play

This Is Not A Theatre Company’s inaugural production was set in an actual

swimming pool. Audiences sat at the edge of the pool with their feet in the water

for an exploration of America’s long, joyful, and complicated relationship with the

swimming pool that included synchronized swimming, an existential boatman,

musical numbers, and a snarky fish along with stories about segregated pools,

and a meditation on pollution. Sarah Lucie of Show Business Weekly said: “The

entirety of the play is well executed, featuring a strong ensemble that has

absolutely no fear of diving into whatever quirky material is presented to them.

Their playfulness is contagious, ultimately creating an uplifting theatrical

experience that leaves the audience joyous and refreshed—and maybe a little

wet. Pool Play, while undeniably light-hearted, manages to communicate some

profound and political themes to those who choose to pay attention.”

http://www.showbusinessweekly.com/article-2401-pool-play-by-jessie-bear.html

Theatre is Easy wrote: "Pool Play...is definitely worth the trip...The entire

ensemble showed moments of skill, wit, and brevity far beyond their years. Erin

B. Mee does a superb job directing this young group of artists to create a

cohesive look at our fascination with the water, entertaining and engaging the

audience along the way." http://www.theasy.com/Reviews/2014/P/poolplay.php

Happenings

On April 20th, 2014, This Is Not A Theatre Company restaged two of Allen

Kaprow's Happenings as part of the exhibit "Allen Kaprow. Other Ways" at the

Fundacio Antoni Tapies in Barcelona. Kaprow, a performance artist known for

developing the concept of a 'happening' in the 1950s and 60s, described it as "a

game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by participants for the

sake of playing...events that, simply put, happen." The participatory and

interactive nature of a 'happening' ensures that each one is a totally unique

theatrical/performance experience that cannot be recreated. This Is Not A

Theatre Company re-enacted two of Kaprow's happenings: Toothbrushing Piece

("performed privately with friends"), and Pose ("Carrying chairs through the city.

Sitting down here and there. Photographed. Pix left on the spot. Going on"). See

photos at www.thisisnotatheatrecompany.com.

A Serious Banquet

This Is Not A Theatre Company's A Serious Banquet (Judson Church, June

2014) was a theatre-dance-dinner structured around the party Pablo Picasso

threw for the painter Henri Rousseau in 1908 as recorded by Gertrude Stein in

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein. If cubism is the

opportunity to see something from multiple angles and perspectives at once, then

this piece asked: what would a cubist play be? What would a cubist experience

be? A Serious Banquet challenged singular perspectives in many ways, the most

obvious being that we repeated key scenes from different emotional and visual

perspectives so audiences could experience the same scene from many “angles”

– a theatrical version of cubism. A Serious Banquet did not have a story; there

was no climactic event. It was a party. The audience entered, engaged with a

number of different people and things, and experienced the world “cubistically."

Partakers were welcomed into the world of the play by Picasso's mistress

Fernande Olivier: they were invited to talk with a guitar programmed to respond

to sound with music; they were asked to answer the phone, which recited

Apollinaire poems; they were asked to sign the birthday card for Rousseau; they

were invited to listen to a still life (a bottle and vase that spoke); they were invited

to sit in a painting of a chair – which they then found out was actually a chair;

they were given wine and/or water, and asked to draw on their cups; they were

invited to view Picasso’s Les Demoiselles D’Avignon recreated with live bodies;

they were asked to introduce Apollinaire (played by an absinthe bottle with

speaker) to other guests. After all the guests had arrived the audience had an

opportunity to experience “salon” moments – one-on-one interactions with

various characters. Georges Braque took a single audience member to the

corner bodega to get more water while discussing art and cubism; Max Jacob

enlisted an audience member’s help in creating a poem; Picasso invited three

audience members to paint on miniature canvases with nail polish and to discuss

art. Alice Toklas took one audience member outside for a cigarette, and told

them how she arrived in Paris. One audience member wrote: “a highlight of my

evening was sitting and having a conversation with ‘Gertrude Stein’ and then

having her paint a word portrait of me — an impromptu improvisation part poem,

part song, it was a moment that continues to resonate with me and makes me

long for great parties where everyone feels they can let go and express

themselves creatively.”[2] After the salon moments, everyone sat down to dinner.

They drew their dinner plates on a paper tablecloth, and three-dimensional food

was served on their two-dimensional plates. During dinner, characters offered

their birthday gifts to Rousseau in the form of a sculpture made up of audience

members (Picasso); a silent dance by Ida Rubenstein; poetry by Max Jacob,

Andre Salmon and Gertrude Stein; a cabaret song by the Demoiselles

D’Avignon; and a dance with fans by Claire Sinclair. After dinner, guests

choreographed "the dance of chocolate” which involved closing your eyes,

putting a Hershey’s kiss on your tongue, and letting “your tongue choreograph

the dance of chocolate” to music. For many, the dance of chocolate, a private

dance in the mouth, was one of the highlights of the evening. Again, as one critic

put it: “Celebration is a sensorial experience. As is art. This evening is an

experience, a way to discover cubist art from other vantage points, through other

senses." He went on to say: "I was allowed instead to play and grapple with the

work, not as a spectator but as a creator myself – not from the outside peering in,

but from within itself.”[3] For many, the opportunity to think and act as artists was

the highlight of the evening: they engaged as co-creators of an event rather than

as observers of someone else’s creativity. One audience member said: “It made

me think of the experience of creation as a liminal space between the individual

experience and decisions of the artist […] but at the same time art creation as a

collective experience in which we shared a space and a moment.”

A Serious Banquet was heralded as a “profound immersive theatrical experience

where performance and life intertwine effortlessly” (Show Business Weekly) and

an “invitation to experience celebration” (NYTheater Now). Show Business

Weekly said: "Collaborators Jessie Bear and Erin Mee are paving the way to a

profound immersive theatrical experience where performance and life intertwine

effortlessly. Let them begin again, and again, and again."

http://showbusinessweekly.com/article-2460-“a-serious-banquet”-directed-by-

erin-b-mee-with-text-by-jessie-bear.html

New York Theatre Review said: "[A Serious Banquet] is enveloping. In many

ways I felt as though I was a kid at Disney World...This is Not A Theatre

Company take it upon themselves to actualize the premise of Woody Allen's

Midnight in Paris in a fantastic fury of red wine, soft cheeses and broadly

characterized homage. They create an evening of boundless fun."

http://newyorktheatrereview.blogspot.com/2014/06/wesley-doucette-on-serious-

banquet-by.html

NYTheatreNow said: "This 'play' isn't a play at all. It is an invitation to experience

celebration. Yes, it is about art and history, but these things were not handed to

me in a dusty book, or put upon the stage where it could judge me for not

knowing enough. I was allowed instead to play and grapple with the work, not as

a spectator but as a creator myself - not from the outside peering in, but from

within itself. http://nytheaternow.com/2014/06/10/a-serious-banquet/

Theatre Is Easy said: "...exciting and innovative...A Serious Banquet is definitely

a dinner party that will leave a positive taste in your mouth and you will be more

than satisfied you attended."

http://www.theasy.com/Reviews/2014/S/aseriousbanquet.php

Finally, Jon Sobel of BlogCritics wrote:

"This is Not A Theatre Company" reflects Erin B. Mee and Jessie Bear's

immersive-theater vision, which is realized with gusto in A Serious Banquet.

Their new show/dinner party riffs lushly on a birthday party given by Pablo

Picasso in his Paris studio for Henri Rousseau in 1908."

https://blogcritics.org/theater-review-nyc-a-serious-banquet-by-this-is-not-a-

theatre-company/

Director Erin B. Mee wrote an article for TCG about the production:

http://www.tcgcircle.org/2014/06/a-serious-banquet-art-as-a-collective-

experience/

Ferry Play invites audiences to participate in the site-specific, sensory

experience of a podplay for the Staten Island Ferry. Armed with nothing more

than a set of headphones and an mp3 file, spectators ride the ferry while listening

to the recorded production - every surrounding sight, smell, and sound plays a

supporting role in the experience. In a theater as big as the Upper New York

Bay, ghosts from the ferry's past mingle with voices from its present, leaving the

spectator to consider their role in the live performance event that is the Big

Apple. The result is a show that is personal and public, ever-changing, and as

dynamic as New York City itself. Ferry Play is a self-scheduled performance:

spectators can ride the ferry late at night, early morning, or any time in between -

they choose the day and time, which then affects the experience they have.

Readymade Cabaret

Readymade Cabaret is based on the notion of readymade art as practiced by

Marcel Duchamp. Numbered scenes about control, fate, and free will are

performed when their number shows up on dice rolled by the audience. Between

the scenes are tweet dances by Under One Dances, our own version of the

Duchamp-Rauschenberg box with chance music, an aleatory omposition by

Caitlin Goldie, our own version of John Cage’s 4’33”, snippets of Tzara’s Dada

manifestos, and an audience-created Dada poem (following Tzara’s instructions).

Because the scenes that are performed, and the order in which they are

performed, depend on the roll of the dice, in any given performance the audience

sees 1 of 39,916,800 possible plays. Audiences watching Readymade Cabaret

have all tried to make meaning of a piece that has been constructed using

elements of chance and readymade material. The fact that humans are "hard

wired" to make meaning of everything is one of the themes in the piece, so the

experience of the piece is an embodiment and example of one of its themes. The

audience literally makes their own meaning. Audiences relish - and inhabit - the

outcomes of chance created by their presence and choices during the

performance.