Silly Little Stage
The Silly Little Stage is a small improv theatre stage, lovingly constructed by hand for participants to discover the expanse of each others imagination. It’s a place to take a load off, get silly with reality, and laugh till your heart aches. Here all the world is a silly little stage.
The Installation
The Silly Little Stage will be a small, hand-built proscenium stage with seating in front and a platform with a spotlight. The stage itself will be an enclosed structure, constructed primarily of wood and cloth. From a distance, it will be hard to decipher what it is (obviously not too hard, no darkwads). People might think, “!? What is that?” But, when participants get closer to investigate, they will find an illuminated inviting space to explore and perform for each other. The seating area will be four rows of tier benches that get progressively taller and more precarious to climb onto. The ten foot tall spotlight platform behind it, will have a small area to climb up to and use the spotlight.
Mission & Philosophy
The goal with this piece is to support creative human interaction by creating an inviting space for the ultimate act of immediacy: putting yourself on a stage and doing whatever comes to mind. By setting the stage, this piece challenges our participants to fill it. Once something is happening, it seeks to engage the viewers to become participants as well and create a positive, creative feedback loop that will leave everyone wondering, “Where did the time go!? That was a silly little stage!”
The Silly Little Stage is a surprising place, a place where you can spend hours doing seemingly nothing at all. Our dearest hope is that by creating the stage, someone will stand on it and share a bit of their soul with their fellow participants. The Silly Little Stage will have just enough inspiration to get you started on the creative journey, by providing a few (non-moopy) props and prompt wheel, but not enough to impede you from showing the world the magical performance artist you may or may not have known was living inside you. Not only is it a stage, but an entire show, with multiple roles to play: run the spotlight, make sound effects, turn on the “Applause” sign at inappropriate times. This piece seeks to engage everyone that is interacting with it in spontaneous creative performance. At the Silly Little Stage we hope that participants will become engrossed in creative flow that they will hardly realize the sun has set and their friends went to the porto and came back already.