Project X: You Are Here

[August 20th, 2008]

It looks more like FEMA than fine art: A dozen performers in orange T-shirts and khaki slacks mill around a gray corrugated-steel shipping container plopped in the parking lot of Northeast 82nd Avenue artist condoplex Milepost 5. Scattered elsewhere around the facility are booths with tables and audio gear. And although you might expect the cast to offer you a free stress test, all they really want is your story.

No, this isn’t a disaster area or the vendors’ ghetto at the state fair—this is Project X: You Are Here, the latest production from Hand2Mouth Theatre, commissioned for this year’s Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle and now halfway through a dry run in Portland. Billed as a “performance installation,” Project is a return to the public spectacles that were formerly the company’s trademark: It consists of a “living museum” (the shipping container) to which spectators can add their vital data—a pin on a map to mark their place of birth, dates memorialized with tags on a timeline, memories recorded on tape or paper—and four “satellite events” offering intimate opportunities to record stories, impressions and stats.

It’s an odd experiment, feeling eerily like a merger of the Census and Story Corps contracted out to Halliburton, and it’s successful—mostly. The art direction is impeccable, and the various interactive exhibits are more compelling than cheesy. Staged at a large event, Project X could deliver an in-depth portrait of a large group of people if Hand2Mouth is up to the task.

Each of the satellite events takes 10 minutes to complete. The night I attended there were perhaps 30 other participants, and in 90 minutes of waiting I only made it through two of the four events. Unless Hand2Mouth hires some help, the company will choke on the Bumbershoot crowds. If the show ends up touring, as director Jonathan Walters hopes it will—the entire shebang fits inside the single shipping container, which can be trucked anywhere in the U.S. at little expense—the logistics will have to be finessed. Catch it now while the crowds are still small, and pity the Bumbershoot audiences. .