I was speaking with an actor last night about art.party’s upcoming projects, and she told me about Anne Washburn’s Apparition: An Uneasy Play of the Underknown. (Washburn wrote The Communist Dracula Project, which premiered at the A.R.T. last fall. She also did some stuff through Chashama!) Apparition, produced in 2005, took place almost entirely in the dark, with some candles, a flashlight, a dim bulb, etc. lighting the stage from time to time. The production was apparently quite successful. Some relevant quotations from the Brooklyn Rail on the effects of darkness: “Waters’ courageous choice to have much of the performance in blackout enhances the stillness of the oppressive darkness” and “The fact that it’s performed in sheer darkness amplifies the violence” (http://www.brooklynrail.org/2005/12/theater/review-out-of-the-darkness).  Seems to have achieved much what we are going for with Malfi. 

The other thing we spoke about last night was accessibility to the audience. The actor said that she found some of Washburn’s work to border on inaccessible. It is important to remember that our art should shatter expectations while remaining accessible. With Malfi, we will literally be putting the power to access (i.e., flashlights) into the hands of the audience. Pretty cool…

-CAM