Flickr set

Images from the opening night of HOUSE / DIVIDED.

Flickr set

Pages is a multivisit program that combines visual arts, film/video, and performing arts with projects that encourage writing and literacy. This years performing arts visit was a performance of HOUSE / DIVIDED.

The Columbus Experience(Sandi Combs)
HOUSE/DIVIDED showing at the Wexner Center through Oct. 8.

WOSU (Joy Reilly)
Review of HOUSE / DIVIDED

Columbus Underground (Jeff Regensburger)
Where Goes the Neighborhood? “House/Divided” at Thurber Theatre

Columbus Dispatch (Michael Grossberg)
‘HOUSE / DIVIDED’ built on haunting fragments

Tony Dallas
House/Divided

Alive (Melissa Starker)
HOUSE/DIVIDED at the Wex

All Sides with Ann Fisher (WOSU)
Re-imagining “The Grapes of Wrath” For Our Time

OSU College of Arts and Sciences blog
Collaborative Creativity Builds HOUSE / DIVIDED

onCampus (Julia Harris)
Multimedia fanfare puts a face on foreclosure

The Lantern (Colleen Carey)
‘House/Divided’ unites old story with a new twist

OSU College of Engineering blog
HOUSE / DIVIDED Premiere Opens Today at Drake’s Thurber Theater

Flickr set

The Builders Association arrived on campus August 29 at the Department of Theatre, met with the OSU theatre student cohort for residency orientation, and began table readings and the on-stage rehearsal process.

Summer in the city has been romanticized, painted, poetized. Personally, I feel that the best way to experience a hot (heat-wave hot!) summer in New York is to find refuge in a cool (in every sense of the word) theater. From July 10^th to July 25^th, the theater in question became that of the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City, which hosted The Builders Association’s Summer Residency Workshop for HOUSE / DIVIDED (formerly ROAD TRIP – as you may know, the title has been adjusted to better reflect the content of the piece).

During the two weeks spent with The Builders, fellow Ohio State student Phil Garrett and I were invited to glance at the inner workings of The Builders artistic family. As days passed, I was once again amazed by the dedication, malleability, and artistic creativity that flowed in the room while the group was constructing piece by piece a new piece of theater.  Creating new works is no task for the faint of heart: there are continuous revisions, grand unknowns, long discussions, and, in the case of HOUSE / DIVIDED, the great task of interweaving three major narrative threads while integrating video, live music, documentary footage, actors…and let’s not forget about the real, plaster-and-lath house that is waiting for The Builders in Columbus and that will make an integral part of the set and the story itself! Bottom line: there was a lot to do and think about.

With a preliminary script in hand, the company implemented months and months of research: composing music that would be played live during the performance, physically manipulating the set into different configurations, re-arranging and enhancing the structure of the piece, editing and superimposing video projections and documentary footage, integrating live-feed cameras on stage and working on character development were only a few of the tasks. Steadily, The Builders laid the foundation of what will become HOUSE / DIVIDED. In the meanwhile, Phil and I got to share in the experience. I had the chance to do a little research work for Marianne, the director; work with Pauline, one of the video artists, on some of the documentary footage The Builders shot in Columbus; be an extra onstage during rehearsals; and briefly work with Latoya, the actor playing Tammy, on character development. In addition to being an all-round go-to man, Phil managed to find some fantastic 1920s archival footage that was used in the workshop performance, and played the roles of CEO Bill Madigan and Senator on stage during the open performance of the workshop on July 25^th.

Having the opportunity to take part in this incredible experience was a fantastic opportunity to take a look at the ins and outs of devising in a professional multimedia company. Even if brief, during the residency I have learned a great deal to be treasured and applied in my own artistic/scholarly quest. I am excited to continue to work with The Builders in September, and I look forward to more incredible experiences as the company moves to the Thurber Theatre at Ohio State for the last portion of their devising before the October premiere, presented by the Wexner Center, of HOUSE / DIVIDED.

sketch for initial set design

Hello Road Trippers. We have been busy working on many aspects of the show from the home base here in New York. The script is percolating along and the set is starting it’s long march across the drawing board of John Cleater and Neal Wilkinson.

John showed us some initial sketches of things he’s been pondering. Above is a perspective from the audience, The House’s general structure, which is quite open, allowing for actors to move throughout. There are architectural elements that are being considered, elements that we would remove from the actual houses in Columbus and transport to the theatre to help define The House. In the sketch, you can see the pediment above the second floor, which would be the pediment from the house we looked at on North 4th street, for example.

A possible cut.

John and Neal have been talking about where/how else we are going to possibly take cuts from the house to use as architectural elements onstage. Above is a doorjamb, plus a small section of the adjoining wall, including a small section above where the plaster has been stripped and the wall is down to the wooden lathes. We saw a lot of that in all the houses we looked at.

Plumbing, the sign of the civilized.

This cut comes out of the bathroom and will work to indicate the same in the set. Porcelain, tile and chrome say a lot about the relative level of comfort of homeowners.