The LeAb Iteration Lab is a creative partnership that Leah Souffrant and I began in 2023 to explore the places where our creative practices overlap, particularly a shared commitment to the processual — iterating, risk-taking, mistake-making, repetition, rehearsal, revision. We’ve come to think of our collaboration as performance research, a practice focused on understanding what performance does and how audiences watch.
Our first collaboratively devised piece, entitled An Iteration in Progress, is movement without being dance. It’s theater without being a play. It explores how routine shapes our lives. One woman acts and is acted upon – in the home, at work, and in public spaces. Actions have consequences. Traces are left behind. At the same time, the performance itself is such an action, leaving traces on each of us. Watching requires attention, and that effort of attention changes us. The audience is invited not only to watch, but to contribute to shared meaning-making. How can our sustained attention transform our experience of the ordinary?
We’re very excited to be presenting An Iteration in Progress this week at The Tank, an amazing nonprofit theater space in Manhattan dedicated to nourishing the theater ecosystem by lowering barriers to entry for weird little creative endeavors like ours. We also have the great good fortune to be working with lighting designer Charlotte Selig and stage manager Rafaela Gaia Penkin, whose contributions have helped to deepen the work we’ve done over the past couple of years and elevate it to an exciting new level.
If you’re in Manhattan this week, I hope you’ll join us! (And stay tuned: a new iteration of the piece will come to Vermont in the spring…)
ABBY PAIGE 
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