On May 12, the collaborative theater company Nerve Tank will team up with the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden to give New Yorkers something new to tweet about. In Nerve Tanks’s latest piece, The Attendants, two performers enclosed in a plastic cube will react to tweets and text messages from the audience aimed at influencing their actions.
The silent performers will rotate between the hours of noon and 6 p.m. through May 14, improvising in response to messages from the audience appearing on a screen. Dressed in suits and ties, the performers will evoke the fast-paced, working energy of the World Financial Center. “We really like to have engaging presentations here,” says Debra Simon, artistic director of the World Financial Center. “We’re hoping the cube strikes up curiosity among the tenants, visitors and residents to stop and think about how we communicate in such a virtual world.” Spectators can visit the Winter Garden or tune in via a live webcam feed on Nerve Tank’s website.
The piece marks the first collaboration between the World Financial Center and Nerve Tank, and both sides are excited. Director Melanie Armer, who comes from the Nerve Tank team, says The Attendants is already among her favorite projects, since it combines elements of performance and installation.
“The Attendants is a two-sided conversation between the performers and the audience where we’ve mediated how they communicate,” she says. “Everyone is limited in what they can express. It forces the viewers to strongly consider language—in just 140 characters, no less—and the performers must respond to words with body movement.”
In addition to examining language in today’s electronically connected society, the piece also carries traditional theater elements. The Attendants will feature a choreographed piece to new music by Stephan Moore to be performed sporadically during the installation. It’s going to be difficult not to put our phones down and pay attention.
