Most of the Berkshire attractions’ summer seasons are already in motion, but a relative newcomer to the rich cultural scene is launching its festival today.Ilan Bachrach stands on the edge of a stage being completely repositioned for an upcoming show where the audience will sit at the same level as the performers. The show is the first of Mass Live Arts’ third festival at Bard College at Simons Rock in Great Barrington. A Boston native, Bachrach started the organization after moving from New York City to the Berkshires, where his parents had settled. He wanted to fill a cultural hole he saw in the region.
“From what I can tell what we’re doing here is not really being done anywhere in the Berkshires, Massachusetts or in New England,” said Bachrach.
“Contemporary performance or experimental theater they are all just code for artists who are trying to redefine the medium that they’re working in,” Bachrach said. “In this case its theater or dance or people who don’t identify as doing either, but just doing something live in a room and what is that. Trying to see what else it can be rather as opposed to just something based around a script or chorographer.”
The idea has manifested itself into a month-long theater, dance, film and art bundle featuring a world premiere and the return of a show commissioned by Mass Live Arts. Andrew Schneider is offering YOUARENOWHERE, a performance featuring dialogue, movement and shocking use of lights.
“I think that theatre as an art form is 20 years behind any other art form,” Schneider said. “Which is weird because the technology is out there in concert lighting and things like that. But you don’t see it employed in traditional theatre. So I wanted to see things on stage that traditional technical infrastructure doesn’t support like incandescent lighting. So I started making my own LED lights, controlling them with a microcontroller and then synching that very precisely with sound and video. To do that you don’t need a theatre you just need a laptop. So I would sit in my apartment and solder things up, code things and try to achieve this sort of synthesizia that I wanted to see on stage.”
Schneider’s way of piecing together the performance is rather unorthodox as well.
“I didn’t even write anything down,” he said. “Most of the text that I say is recorded. I surround myself with books and things that I’m interested in and I would have an idea for a section of dialogue. I would record it and listen play it back listening to it on headphones. As I would hear it I would say it at the same time as a way to not have to memorize anything.”
YOUARENOWHERE runs from July 6th to the 11th.
“Someone can expect to at first be confused, then realize they don’t need to be confused, because truly no one knows what’s going on,” Schneider said. “We’re exploring these ideas that don’t really fit together and that’s creating something bigger. Everyone latches onto that, gets it and lets the show wash over them and go along for the ride.”
To sum it up, Schneider says his show operates like a human brain, constantly distracted by innumerable tasks or thoughts. Bachrach proves it.
“For example, my phone just buzzed in my pocket right now,” Bachrach said. “There are three things going on in my head about who that could be. Is it my girlfriend? Is it somebody that’s coming next week? The show is like that for me. Um…I don’t remember what your question was.”
Operating with a staff of five people, Mass Live Arts also launched a formal performance training institute this summer for recent college graduates. Artists, some of whom design and build their own sets, stay in campus dorms and fuel up in the school’s cafeteria. Also, showing at the festival is a dance-play by the Faye Driscoll Group on July 14th using recorded stories told by the performers to inspire movement.
Mass Live Arts also offers film showings like Eternal. In it, two performers read the final lines from the 2004 cult film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, unedited for two straight hours.
Beverly Asaro has come to the Berkshires from New Jersey every summer for the past 40 years and stopped by Mass Live Arts for the first time.
“It’s totally different than anything we’ve ever experienced here,” Asaro said. “I think it will be a wonderful draw for younger people and anyone actually. There’s gallery, video, theatre and music all in the same place. I like that.”
