The current show at New York City's Foundry Theater, "Provenance of Beauty", is about the South Bronx, peformed in the South Bronx -- on a bus that is rolling through the South Bronx.
THE PROVENANCE OF BEAUTY is a poetic travelogue performed on a bus touring the South Bronx. As we travel the streets of the neighborhood, Rankine's evocative text points out and reflects upon the sites that pass by outside the windows.
THE PROVENANCE OF BEAUTY. from Sunder Ganglani on Vimeo.
It looks like there is a mix of live action and recorded media. From their Web site:
The audience boards the bus in Spanish Harlem, puts on headphones and for 90 minutes eavesdrops on the voice - both live and recorded - of this historic place. PROVENANCE is an experience that both responds to and redoubles the landscape - its sites, history, present and future - mapping out a poetic cartography of a neighborhood - of any neighborhood - in its eternal state of evolution.Good placecasting ought to be an artform. I love the sound of an innovative project like this.
Village Voice profiles the project here. And one of my favorite NPR reporters, Robert Smith, has a radio story about the performance on All Things Considered this afternoon.
**UPDATE: Listening to the NPR story this evening, it sounds like this is really more audio tour than performance. It's full or stories about the people and buildings along the route. In fact, it sounds a lot like the ArtShare Northeast Minneapolis tour that I've written about a couple times here: created by artists, full of oral histories, focus on an unexpected place. The big difference is that this one is on a bus. And that brings up a good point that Robert Smith makes in his story:
"It's a strange experience; the play is about the South Bronx, but we never get off the bus, never get to interact with the scenes we see. Much of the talk is about the issues of gentrification, but what could be more gentrifying than a brainy theater piece in a tour bus?"
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