DRAMA IN THE MARKETPLACE
Trade Practices, which launches HERE’s 2014-2015 season, takes the audience on a tour into the bowels of the corporate world where deals are negotiated, promises are broken, and fortunes are made and lost.
It was created by director Kristin Marting (HERE artistic director) and set designer David Evans Morris, who were trying to make sense of the various financial crises that seem a permanent part of the modern world. After talking over their idea, Marting and Morris turned it over to a team of writers (Erin Courtney, Eisa Davis, Robert Lyons, Qui Nguyen, KJ Sanchez, Chris Wells) , who then delivered it to ten talented performers, clearly eager to work outside an actor’s typical comfort zone.
A site specific, immersive event, held in Pershing Hall on Governor’s Island in New York City’s harbor, Trade Practices has four different story lines that relate to a fictional company, Tender, Inc., a family business that’s going public. Each episode is told from the perspective of a specific group within the company: Owners, Managers, Marketers, and Workers.
After an initial orientation, members of the audience choose which story line they would like to follow by buying shares giving them admission to the episode of one of the groups. After each episode, the audience returns to the trading floor, hears a few more stories about Tender, Inc., and is allowed to trade or sell shares which will admit them to other stories and possibly add to their supply of stock.
The episodes and trading periods are enriched with videos (Gil Sperling) and original songs (Xander Duell) sung by the actors, some of whom are quite good. Others should confine their singing efforts to the shower.
This is a fascinating idea, and in practice, it works remarkably smoothly. Members of the stock exchange might want to observe. But like many interactive shows, the idea is much more intriguing than the actual stories. The humor is broad, the plot lines are shallow, and the characters are comic standards. No matter how skilled the actors, each scene ends up like a Saturday Night Live sketch that went on too long.
Shows like Trade Practices are particularly hard to review because audience members’ experiences will vary according to which episodes they choose. It’s even possible to stick to one story line throughout. Either way, the experience will only be one in many. So one can only make a general statement about the tone of the show.
Trade Practices, like New York itself, is always screwy, often entertaining, and sometimes tedious. For anyone living in or near the city, it certainly provides a pleasurable diversion. And no one would trade or sell the trip to Governor’s Island: It’s one of the best views of Manhattan.
photos by Carl Skutsch
Trade Practices
HERE
Pershing Hall on Governors Island
scheduled to end on September 21, 2014
for tickets, call 212 352 3101 or visit www.here.org
