An ambitious 24 year performance experiment.
Presented June 4–8, 2019 by FringeArts as part of the High Pressure Fire Service Festival
Presented June 4–8, 2019 by FringeArts as part of the High Pressure Fire Service Festival
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Team Sunshine Performance Corporation reunites The Sincerity Project cast for the third installment in an ambitious 24-year experiment that offers a new devised theater work every two to three years. A meditation on the passage of time that draws from the real lives of its creators, The Sincerity Project #3 explores the implications and challenges of aging, shifting expectations and identities, and how we all—as individuals and a culture—change, respond, evolve, and fail.
Responses to The Sincerity Project #3Patched together like a quilt of human lives, The Sincerity Project has the potential to reflect powerfully upon growth, aging, and relationships, including the relationship between life and art. This innovative performance is not to be missed.” I particularly enjoyed the performance of empathy through gently spilled light off stage. The actors off stage transmitted their personal histories and intimacy through quiet act of listening, gazing and caring at all times. It was no longer “off stage” space, but another dimension in a piece. I witnessed the gem of public sincerity there... " |
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Photos by Johanna Austin, www.AustinArt.org
Cast & TeamPerformer/Creators:Aram Aghazarian, Benjamin Camp, Rachel Camp, Makoto Hirano, Mel Krodman, Iris McCloughan
Director/Creator: Alex Torra Assistant Director: Rachel Camp Stage Manager: Emily Hayes Production Manager: Melanie Leeds Technical Director: Robert Edmondson, Jr. Production Designer: Masha Tsimring Set Design Interns: Angela Toich, Jack McManus Sound Designer: Edward Smith Music Curator: Iris McCloughan Costume Designer: Emilie Krause TSPC Operations Manager: Phoebe Schaub Audience Experience Manager, TSPC Intern: Josephine Ross Video Producer: Danielle Gatto |
A Letter from the Director
The Sincerity Project didn't used to be this way.
When we started working on it in 2012, it was supposed to be a one-off show that explored truth, lies, and what it meant to be 'authentic' on stage. We put together 70-mins of material that ended up being a lot about our lives, performed a work-in-progress showing, and then put it away. When we came back to it eight months later to prepare for the official premiere in December 2014, a funny thing happened. This show about our lives, which had felt so vital, so current, so alive, was dead. In less than a year, the show felt out of date, not reflective of where and who we were. As we updated the show, we began to joke and dream: what if we did this over and over again? Wouldn't it be crazy to see the same people in twenty years doing the same things? To see them more wrinkled, more gravity-afflicted. Maybe we'd all make it, maybe we wouldn't.
These dreams and jokes vibrated, felt like a dare we couldn't pass up. So we didn't. In 2014 we staked our claim. We would come together every two years to make a performance, in which we perform ourselves and mine the material of our lives for the show. No one seemed to believe that we were really serious. Many people asked, after seeing the performance, if that was true or just part of the play around authenticity and sincerity.
When we came back together in 2016, the mood was...different. Not somber, certainly, but in that rehearsal room we began to grapple with the enormity of what we'd set out to do. Again, so much had changed. In two short years some of the pronouncements we'd made in the first show, the knowledge we were positive of, all of these felt so simple. We made a show about labor, and about care, care for others and care for ourselves. In the wake of the 2016 show, we began to define this project as a practice.
Every two years, we return to each other, to check in, to hold, to support, and to measure the distance we've traveled, the transformations we've undergone, and the things we've gained and lost. We began to see how this practice, in a way, is building an archive: each performance is a weigh station on a 24-year journey we've committed to undertaking together. Some people may stick around, some may not. Each performance contains parts of us that may persist or pass away by the time the next iteration happens. As we continue, the project accumulates information, knowledge, and evidence. This evidence connects each of us to a specific moment in time, and that moment includes you.
Thank you for joining us here at year 4 of 24. See you next time.
When we started working on it in 2012, it was supposed to be a one-off show that explored truth, lies, and what it meant to be 'authentic' on stage. We put together 70-mins of material that ended up being a lot about our lives, performed a work-in-progress showing, and then put it away. When we came back to it eight months later to prepare for the official premiere in December 2014, a funny thing happened. This show about our lives, which had felt so vital, so current, so alive, was dead. In less than a year, the show felt out of date, not reflective of where and who we were. As we updated the show, we began to joke and dream: what if we did this over and over again? Wouldn't it be crazy to see the same people in twenty years doing the same things? To see them more wrinkled, more gravity-afflicted. Maybe we'd all make it, maybe we wouldn't.
These dreams and jokes vibrated, felt like a dare we couldn't pass up. So we didn't. In 2014 we staked our claim. We would come together every two years to make a performance, in which we perform ourselves and mine the material of our lives for the show. No one seemed to believe that we were really serious. Many people asked, after seeing the performance, if that was true or just part of the play around authenticity and sincerity.
When we came back together in 2016, the mood was...different. Not somber, certainly, but in that rehearsal room we began to grapple with the enormity of what we'd set out to do. Again, so much had changed. In two short years some of the pronouncements we'd made in the first show, the knowledge we were positive of, all of these felt so simple. We made a show about labor, and about care, care for others and care for ourselves. In the wake of the 2016 show, we began to define this project as a practice.
Every two years, we return to each other, to check in, to hold, to support, and to measure the distance we've traveled, the transformations we've undergone, and the things we've gained and lost. We began to see how this practice, in a way, is building an archive: each performance is a weigh station on a 24-year journey we've committed to undertaking together. Some people may stick around, some may not. Each performance contains parts of us that may persist or pass away by the time the next iteration happens. As we continue, the project accumulates information, knowledge, and evidence. This evidence connects each of us to a specific moment in time, and that moment includes you.
Thank you for joining us here at year 4 of 24. See you next time.
Special Thanks and Support
This presentation was supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Additional funding provided by FringeArts, Swarthmore Faculty Research Support Grant, and the Wyncote Foundation.
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