Performance Welcome to North Crawford, Conn. As narrator Tom Newton (an impeccable Tim True) assures us, this is a place where things “change just about as quickly as the rules of chess.” It’s 1962, and   More

Arts & Books Still sitting in the library after Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells’ The Quiet Volume, I’m almost too overwhelmed to write. I previewed this piece before the Time-Based Art Festival began, so I knew what to expect going in: Two participants are seated at ...   More

Arts & Books Perhaps it’s just TBA fatigue, but I struggled to get into Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It So Good). The pieces seemed to be there: technical mastery, crack improvisational skills, some genuine belly laughs, audience participation that is neither obnoxious nor jarring. Yet I still found myself weary after the performance.Kitchen<...   More

Arts & Books The conversations of Japanese theater troupe Chelfitsch are repetitive, mundane and awkward. They are also spellbinding.In three related vignettes (presented in Japanese with easy-to-follow supertitles), the cast captures the everyday annoyances and absurdities of modern office life. Employing the stylized choreography for which Chelfitsch is known—movements simultaneously balletic and robotic�...   More

Arts & Books “The city is a human creation reflecting its actors,” Gabino Rodríguez says, midway through Asalto al Agua Transparente (in English, The Assault on Clear Waters). It’s not a particularly earth-shattering statement, but it rings true for both the content and the form of this satisfying production, which was the second TBA offering...   More

Arts & Books I was first introduced to Buckminster Fuller by a college professor in a history of architecture course. This professor, an endearing and excitable German we all revered, bounced about the lecture hall as he spoke, oh-so-sonorously, about Fuller’s geodesic dome, his avant-garde designs and his utopian principles.No matter how much enthusiasm that professor had for Fuller, experimental filmmaker ...   More

Performance Both A Steady Rain and The Detective’s Wife, presented by Hellfire Productions, take place on stormy nights. At least that’s what the thundery sound effects suggest—the exact context of ea   More

Arts & Books So much at the Time Based Art festival is in your face. Big Art Group screams about Greek tragedy and squirts ketchup all over the place. Miguel Gutierrez unleashes a mile-a-minute monologue about a thousand topics. This can be exhausting, and it can also trick you into thinking that performance is supposed to assault you in some way. That’s why I was so glad to catch (glowing), a clean a...   More

Arts & Books If you have plans to see Heavens What Have I Done tonight or tomorrow, Miguel Gutierrez probably wants you to stop reading this. Gutierrez is an advocate of audience members entering performances blindly. He dislikes programs, and he dislikes papers about the “meaning” of his work. Does Gutierrez want to read a graduate student’s analysis of his performance? No. Like everyone else, he...   More

Arts & Books Miriam, a world premiere from Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire, is dark. Not gloomy or sinister—no, this is a performance genuinely devoid of light. As a result, it can be difficult to make out what exactly is happening onstage, what Chipaumire and fellow dancer Okwui Okpokwasili are wearing, what sorts of props they’re handling. Occasional flashes of light break the darkness—...   More