Julian Mesri

Rey Lucas, Maria Helan Lopez and Pep Munoz in "A room with no furniture"

Part of my belief in the need for new theater (not just in representation, but in practice), is in the investigation and creation of different ways of making and developing work. I hope to share some of my techniques with you all and explore certain themes that I am wrestling with.

For A room with no furniture which we are presenting tomorrow at 5 PM at Space on White (tickets here) – I have been particularly influenced by the idea of 2-part counterpoint, not unlike a Bach invention. The beauty of counterpoint is in how the author exploits the independent voices. The trick to musical counterpoint is following those laws set up according to the laws of consonance and dissonance (no parallel fifths, contrary motion, etc.).

With our theatrical counterpoint we used the laws of balancing space – making sure that the independent worlds were linked in a solid way to themselves but did not disrupt the unity of the stage. Rather than work through the symbolic relationship of the two stories I allowed them to be choreographed independently (I worked with one story, and my movement director, Leni Mendez with the other), and in putting them together tried to balance the stage out, finding moments where those stories met. Where music uses two independent voices – theater uses two independent worlds (how we communicate our stories) and unifies them.

Here, I love the choice of words that music uses: “voices” – we can think of the voice in theater as not just the actors’ voices but the individual voice of a theatrical theme – mood, gesture, sound, image. What I did in Room was juxtapose two voices, and in doing so, find a relationship between gestures and space using balance techniques not unlike music. But to use voice for “image” – the image speaks -and part of the excitement of A room with no furniture has been seeing what happens when two images are speaking to us at the same time, and we are forced to relate them. I am curious to see what questions arise – and it has certainly been a magical way of opening up each of these independent worlds.