ABBY PAIGE

Last summer Leah Souffrant and I started working together on a devised performance project. We’re calling this collaboration the LeAB iteration LAB, to emphasize a shared commitment to the processual — experimentation, risk-taking and mistake-making, and the revelations that emerge from repetition, rehearsal, and revision.

Thinking together about routine, duration, narrative, and witness, we created an experimental movement piece that bridges our creative interests and practices. Last August we shared the work-in-progress with a small invited audience in Vermont; last week we returned to the piece and presented it in Manhattan. Many thanks to Theaterlab for hosting us and to the friends and colleagues who came out to watch and share their feedback with us!

Remounting our work-in-progress was an important next step in our research/creation process. We tried to recreate the work as faithfully as we could, but we also had new questions about time, audience, gesture, and encounter that we wanted to explore. The work felt “metabolized” in a new way, and our learning continued. We’re looking forward to sharing a residency this summer at Hewnoaks to ponder our next iteration…