From: Michael Black
Subject: Window at The Bay
Date: 1999/05/28
Newsgroups: mtl.general
Probably everyone's heard about it by now, but there are four guys from Australia living in a window at The Bay downtown for two weeks, as part of the Festival de Theatre des Ameriques. They started last Friday, I had planned to post then, and will be there till next Friday.
It's an odd mixture. At first, it seems like some voyeuristic situation, sort of like that JenniCam thing, www.jennicam.org (though I've never seen the output) but continuous rather than snapshots. They are actually living behind glass in a public space.
Or it reminds me of an idea I had two years ago at the Fringe Festival. Watching Maeve, a woman who comes each year from out of town to see the shows and be a venue manager, have these deep conversations about the shows with whoever passed by, I thought one could stage it as a show. Just sell tickets to it, and let people watch them have their conversation. Each show would be different, since it would be based on what shows the people have seen and whatever else was happening that day. Make it a show simply by selling tickets.
But then it seems like improv, http://members.tripod.com/~IMPROME/index.html because the audience interacts with the people in the window. It's not quite like improv though, because improv is based on a series of games that provide a framework for the audience to interact with the performers. While the audience has influence on the way the improv goes, really radical change is impossible.
So maybe it's about communication. A lot of the interaction is in fact communication. It's sometimes hard to keep track of the conversations because the crowd can be quite big and while you can usually see the answers from the window, you miss the questions from the "audience". A lot of it is questions and answers about the situation.
Then when I went past yesterday, I realized that the show is repeating itself. Like on a previous day at about that time, someone was getting a massage in the living room while another was in the kitchen making supper (it was spaghetti). Yet this isn't the repetition of a show that plays every night at 8pm, it's the repetition of life in all it's routine-ness.
Then when I came out of a movie (Payback at the Palace) I went and checked to see what was happening and it seemed like pure show, just as I had noted at other times during the week. They were doing their nightly dance routine, with the music coming out of the outdoor speakers. They clearly were performing for the evening audience.
And even when they are just doing routine things, there is a certain flare to it. They were cooking Wednesday night and one takes a small garbage bag (probably illegal at this point) and puts it on the head of another, so he has a chef's hat. That wouldn't be happening if there was no audience. And one of them has a sort of Ed Grimley (the Martin Short character) walk.
Of course, one reason that improv has those games is to encourage the interaction between the audience and the performers. On some level, it is hard to break that dividing line between performer and audience. Are people going by and telling the people in the window what they've been doing or about some thing that any visitor to Montreal must see before they leave town? Most of the crowd that gathers (and every time I've been past there has been a crowd, though Wednesday when it was cooler it was smaller) is just an audience. However there are always bold people who will approach the window (which in itself requires boldness since you need to be close to the window for easy communication, but in a traditional show it would be seen as trying to get a good seat) and start interacting with the people on the other side.
How successful can the "audience" be at controlling the show? The first night, I wrote on a piece of paper (most people end up using scraps of paper tht they happen to have, but in typical fashion I happened to have some full sheets of blank paper) the suggestion that they post here. One of them wrote down the information, but I haven't seen anything. Maybe they forgot. But I waited until they finished whatever they were doing, not wanting to interrupt. Can someone passing by invoke a major change by having the nerve to act, or will it be ignored at that moment? That night, I had some bagels from Fairmount Bagels, and offered them to the people in the window, and they decline, claiming being full. They always seem to be eating, or preparing a meal, every time I go by. But I wasn't concerned about feeding them, I was curious about whether they'd take the offering.
I haven't seen anyone with deliberate props. I'm seriously considirng taking a chair down there and sitting for a while to see the response, but I probably can't be bothered carrying even a fold up chair down. There are a lot of stuffed animals in that window with them, and if anyone wanted to perform they might carry their favourite stuffed animal down there with them. it's bound to get a comment from the window. An obvious prop would be food, to see what happens.
Paper and a marker is a necessity if you want to talk to them.
However, people passing by often have things that do get the attention of the people beyond the glass. I forget which day, but one time there was a young girl, maybe five years old, and she had a violin case with her. They talked her into taking it out, and she played "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" for the "audience"; I don't think the window allows much noise to get in (nothing seems to get out) so I don't think the people living there could actually hear the performance. Someone was there with a box that looked like it came from a bakery, and they gestured about it.
But then when you step back it's interesting to see the audience. It does resemble watching people watching animals at the zoo (though I don't know what the feeding times are). The crowd is where the people in the window are, and if they are in different rooms, the biggest crowd is watching the most interesting activity. A shower really attracts the crowd. the nightly dance in the living room is another hot item. If someone moves into another room the audience will follow and I started laughing last night as I watched that happen. Relatively little goes on in the bedroom and I've not been passed when anyone is asleep.
The men in the window shaved their heads for the "performance". What it seemed to do is make them look similar (I keep thinking of Thing 1 and Thing 2 in The Cat in the Hat, though there are four of them), and it's only with time that their identities separate out. Of course, it works in reverse too. Someone just passing by may, depending on the size of the crowd and any identifying features, be acknowledge by the people living there. But if someone in the audience is performing, ie they've interacted or somehow stood out, and then return, they get acknowledged because they are familiar. Of course, I think that woman who was there on Saturday night asking what seemed like a hundred questions was probably banned from the site.
Even the audience becomes recognizable if they've been there before. There were a few people Wednesday night who I'd seen on Saturday. And of course there is a chance to see celebrities. Someone on the Mirror's Best of Montreal poll last year showed up on Wednesday. And there was someone else who looked familiar though I couldn't place her, with an FTA pass around her neck. She reminded me of someone I once knew, but then the next day I woke up realizing that she looked like Veronica Hamel from Hill Street Blues, though I'm sure she wasn't.
I guess that's all for now.
The FTA website is at www.fta.qc.ca. The specific area on the website for the people in the window is at www.fta.qc.ca/udc.
There's a terminal inside The Bay where you can view the site and send email to the "performers". I haven't given it a try to see if one can send messages from there to the newsgroup, which someone else passing by might want to try in order to give us live reports.
You can email them at udc@fta.qc.ca
Or actually do it the old fashioned way by telephone at 281-4987. It seems like such a common mode of communication that I haven't even given any thought to picking up the phone and asking them what's on the menu for supper tonight.
If you've got a cellphone, its worth taking it if you are going by The Bay. You can actually see and talk to them, whereas everyone else has to stick with the written word, or run up the street to a telephone (there's a payphone in the Metro at least) and lose sight of the window.
You can also fax them at 281-4986.
It is well worth going by to take a look. If you've got children, they'll probably have fun, and are fairly likely to be acknowledge simply because they are children.
And of course the Fringe Festival takes place June 18 to 27 around St. Lawrence Blvd. There is definitely one improv act performing, maybe more but I can't tell from the company names. And the Fringe Festival itself has that element of changing the line between performer and audience.
Michael