Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
By 2011, she was producingshows in Times Square.
It wasamuse-bouchetheater, close-up magic, eye-contact-palooza.
They provided, Jones said, intimate exchanges in public spaces.
The most obvious limitation of the form is capacity.
On a Monday, you gotta quicklysign up for ticketsfor a Thursday show; they go fast.
Viewers contribute thought bubbles, typing little messages that manifest in the void.
I think so floats by.
We engage, but our busy, Zoom-dazzled eyes relax.
The viewer surrenders some burdens in that waiting room … including choice.
You linger in the screensaver limbo until your performer is ready for you.
Then, without warning, youre diverted to another web interface.
(You dont have to watch yourself for the whole thing, though, thank God.)
The waiting rooms invisible restful collective vanishes and were plunged into the intensity of the one-on-one.
Larhonda looks at her listener hungrily.
You look like you smell like the sky / in May / after a good rain, she says.
As she speaks, the source of that hunger shifts.
Why is she so simultaneously grateful and resentful toward her visitor?
What exactly are we here to take away?
InVote, theres less reliance on the give-and-take of the one-to-one presentation than in Roses show.
Taylor seems more interested in delivering her message, literally.
(The short sequence ends with her holding an envelope, vowing to mail her ballot.
No one goes to Speakers Corner hoping that people come by one at a time.
These pieces constitute further digital experiments in the piece-by-piece analysis of theater thats taking place right now.
The online embodiment of Theatre for One mainly reminds us of the value of awkward closeness.
You sit up straight and lean in and listen hard.
