Torn Space
Site-based performance is work developed for non-traditional performance venues. Torn Space has developed work within factories, grain elevators, a steam ship, a processing facility, a train terminal, and a church among others. Site-based performance is about bringing audiences to unexplored spaces, curating their experience, repositioning the familiar into unfamiliar territory, while crafting a series of visual moments that communicate with one another. In site-based works, the architecture provides the visual parameters, often stripped of their original function, and it’s our job to provide context, so that the audience may connect with the space and performance in a meaningful way.
Recently we have been developing site-based performances within the context of the public ritual. In order to deliver an access point for the audience as well as a narrative perspective, we have devised a fictitious society to tell the story within an alternative reality, composed of recycled pop culture, ancient mythologies, machinery and technology, designed by an interdisciplinary team of artists and performers. This society has their own beliefs, priorities, and mannerisms, and the performance is their ceremony in honor of a theme; past themes have centered on the act of violence, 19th century romance and the various conceptions of Burden. The society is constructed from traditional and non-traditional performers; ranging from military re-enactors, high school marching bands, blacksmiths, farm animals, gospel singers etc., providing a unique patchwork of America in the early part of the 21st Century and specifically Buffalo, NY in the early part of the 21st Century. By incorporating the talents of our community and working with both professional and nonprofessional actors our work is firmly rooted in the traditions of the ancient Greeks, who believed “amateur” provided vitality to performance.
Ultimately site-based work is about giving the audience an experience that they participate with; bringing them to different spaces, providing curated vantage points, while presenting them with images that are both collective and self-enclosed. It’s about creating a collective ritual that looks to the ancients while being fixed in the present tense.
-Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola, Co-founders of Torn Space
Production Title: They Kill Things
Year: 2015
Torn Space Theater original piece
Written/Directed by Dan Shanahan & Melissa Meola
Film by: FLATSITTER (Kyle Marler)
Performed by: Johnny Toohill
, Matthew Crane, Candace Lukasik, Shalya James, Kalub Thompson, Isabella Trump, Jodi Lynn Maracle, Mary Schnepf, Melissa Wagner, Alexia Buono, Becky Globus, Michelle Merlo, Bonnie Jean Taylor, Molly Jean Taylor, Zoe Scruggs, Dudney Joseph, Davida Tolbert, Diane Gaidry, Justin Leis, MJ Myer
Production Title: STATIONS
Year: 2018
Torn Space Theater original piece
Written/Directed by Dan Shanahan & Melissa Meola
Film by FLATSITTER (Kyle Marler)
Performed by:
Marshall Maxwell, Kalub Thompson, Johnny Toohill, Carmen Swan, Matthew Crane, Deymia Donalson, Tim McPeek, Courtney Barrow, Alexia Buono, Olivia Frank, Becky Globus, James Lioi, Melissa Wagner, Diane Gaidry, Lindsay Brandon Hunter, Justin Leis, MJ Myers, Harrington Yarborough, Sarah Barry, Kevin Cusi, Jing Yi Gao, Kathryn Henderson, Shalya James, Holly Kirkpatrick, Glo McDonald, Corinne McLoughlin, Irene Rekhviashvili, Isabelle Trump
Torn Space is:
Director, Writer – Dan Shanahan
Director, Writer – Melissa Meola
Managing Director – Marisa Caruso
Lighting Designer- John Rickus and Carlie Todoro-Rickus
Marketing Design, Installation Artist – Tim Stegner
Sound Designer – Justin Rowland, Eric Burlingame, Avi Amon
Costume Designer – Jess Wegrzyn
Video Designer – Brian Milbrand
Installation Artist – Frank Napolski, MJ Myers
Choreographer – Alexia Buono
