SITI Co: Under Construction

The company has had some great audiences for Under Construction. I think one of the greatest parts of this show is that the audience really gets the chance to speak with the company afterwards. In that sense it’s a real community event and a truly interactive experience. Last weekend all of the college kids were in town and many of them made it to the show. I’m always impressed with how inspirational the company is to everyone, and how far reaching the company’s influence has been.

This coming weekend is Theater Professionals Weekend, so there should be a whole new variety of audiences to experience the show. But in addition to the festival’s main weekends, the group continues to plow through the week with shows every night. Nothing  too new to report- some wear and tear on the props and costumes which has been dealt with. There’s a moment in the show where Leon throws a bucket onto a raised platform in the space (collectively referred to as ‘the bandstand’) so that he can climb up the ladder and place it where it needs to go. He’s gotten very good at unintentionally tossing the bucket through the hole where the ladder is, even repeatedly, night after night. That’s been pretty interesting to follow in the performance reports.

The group continues to train for a half hour before every performance. Frequently they’ll do about 20 minutes of Suzuki, then segue into open Viewpoints, sometimes with something in mind like “let’s concentrate on the flow of air in the room.”

Yesterday Rachel Grimes, pianist extraordinaire, was in the room. She played piano for Suzuki stomping. It was pretty cool. She had to maintain a pretty solid tempo and despite her concerns about the bottom dropping out of the sound, the music provided an interesting new character to the stomping that you don’t normally get with the other assorted tracks they stomp to.

Rachel: “Who’s in control here? Who’s driving the bus? There was some pretty complicated syncopation in the middle there!”

She played for the Suzuki slow ten. Rachel is fantastic at developing intriguing textures. You can tell that everyone is making interesting discoveries when she plays.

Then she accompanied the viewpoint session. It was really quite spectacular. She called it “pointilist” after. It started with Sam performing “Howl” from a swivel chair, and it became this twisted, fragmented meditation on America. As the poem finished and others started riffing off of the end of the poem, Rachel began her improvisation. Really a cool session.

Then Darron’s mom came and brought cookies and ham biscuits.