 June 8th @ 330pm & June 9th @ 2pm. So-fi is a festival for cutting edge, low-fi, high concept, multidisciplinary solo work. Westbeth is New York City landmark listed on the National Registrar of Historic Places since Dec 8, 2009, a home to artists and major cultural organizations including the New School for Drama, The Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance, the School for Poetic Computation. The location where Lost My Train Of Thought will be performed was the location of Bell Labs’ Boardroom where the first talking movie, the condenser microphone, the first TV broadcast, and the first binary computer were demonstrated. Lost My Train Of Thought is an interactive theatrical story that unfolds through card catalogs, dollhouse miniatures, Radioptican Magic Lanterns, and an antique windup tin train. The June festival includes 6 premieres, as well as revivals of 4 critically acclaimed remounts and 3 works in progress. World Premieres: Dad by Cara Francis (The New York NeoFuturists), Parlor Poems created by Natalie Johnsonius Neubert (Necessary Exposure: The Female Playwright Project) with permission from the Estate of the late Dennis Krausnick (Shakespeare & Co), Whiskey Flicks Live: King of New York by Michael Niederman (uniform) and Daniel McCoy (The New York NeoFuturists), Toys 101: The Last Class by Jonathan Alexandratos, Lost My Train of Thought by Tiny Box Theater. New York premieres: Abeyance by Tyler West (Glitter Gutter at The Slipper Room) Critically Acclaimed Revivals: Shasta Geaux Pop by Ayesha Jordan and Charlotte Brathwaite (The Public Theater’s Under The Radar), The Assembly’s The Dark Heart of Meteorology, By Steven Aubrey, Directed by Jess Chayes (HOME/SICK), St Kilda written and performed by Jody Christopherson (AMP, Greencard Wedding at HERE Arts Center), Directed by Isaac Byrne (The Other Mozart) and The Legend of White Woman Creek by The Coldharts (Edgar Allan). Workshops include Kyra Miller’s BlueBeardGasLight (in association with The Muse Project, Artistic Director Jocelyn Kuritsky), Jonathan Torn’s The Scientist: an Evening with John C. Lilly and phase(un)fazed by Natalie Deryn Johnson Lost My Train Of Thought plays in rep with Natalie Johnsonius Neubert's Parlor Poems, 6/8 and 6/9. Tickets are currently on sale and will be $25 per single ticket, $36 per two-show double bill ticket. (Please note that Westbeth is handicap accessible with ramps and elevators.) Nearest trains to Westbeth are (1,2,3 to 14th Street). Tickets can be purchased at https://www.so-fi-festival.com/, (888) 692-7878, or in person at the box office 30 minutes prior to curtain (463 West Street, Room 1209, between Bethune and Bank St). Full performance line-up listed below. For more info and a full festival calendar please visit: https://www.so-fi-festival.com/ Tell us about your show? In your own words, what is it/ what is it/what is it about? Lost My Train of Thought is an interactive theatrical story that unfolds through card catalogs, dollhouse miniatures, and an antique windup tin train. The main character, The Librarian, brings the audience along on a series of six journeys, some for work, some for family, some for pleasure. On each journey audience members must make a choice, and each outcome affects the story being told. This 45-minute piece contains more than 128 possible story variants. It’s going to be fun for us to discover which stories the audiences chooses in the moment and we hope it’s fun for the audience to make those choices and experience the outcomes. Sarah is our solo performer for this piece and, in addition to working with Tiny Box Theater, she’s also a librarian. The antique tin train is The Joy Line, which inspired Joy, the writer, to create a piece around it. We like these meta elements a lot. Justin is often on the road, traveling for work, and with that comes a series of encounters with people and places of varying amounts and qualities of time. Lost My Train of Thought explores how we catalog time: is it borrowed, bought, saved, stolen, wasted, or lost? What multidisciplinary elements does it include and how are they used? How are they unique? Lost My Train of Thought uses elements of toy and object theater and inspiration from gamebook and branching plot novels. The show features one live performer (the Librarian), two train and card catalog operators (the Engineers) and a pre-recorded voice over. The performer and the voice over instruct audience members to participate in the storytelling, either by speaking lines, joining the action, adding miniature set pieces, or by making a plot choice. Why do you make theater? Can you talk about the medium and what it lends to your work? The Tiny Box Theater experience for both audience and performer is one that pushes us to reimagine what stories look and sound like, and to find theatricality in small moments. We invite our audiences to get close, listen carefully, and find themselves in part of the piece. We make theater to experiment with performance, objects, and narratives and actively engage our audiences in the storytelling. This is our first longer and larger performance. Our ten other pieces are all just a few minutes each, for a few people at a time, and take place inside of repurposed boxes using only pre-recorded sound. Lost My Train of Thought incorporates boxes—in this case, card catalogs—but the action is live and takes place on a stage instead of inside a portable box. As with our other pieces, Lost My Train of Thought features audience interaction with miniatures and other objects. Here, the antique tin train figures prominently and each of the six journeys features a different layout for the train tracks that is incorporated into the storytelling. Objects, whether nostalgic, familiar, DIY, or brand new, all have inherent stories in them. We like to take aspects of these preconceptions and twist and turn them into stories of our own devising. TINY BOX THEATER was founded by Sarah Murphy, Justin Steeve, and Joy Tomasko in 2015. They originally met last century during undergraduate studies in theater at Drew University. Tiny Box Theater works are a theatrical hybrid of a pop-up book, diorama, radio play, live performance, and toy theater. Our small, portable venues invite individual audiences to get close. The characteristics of the boxes themselves help inform the story and the style in which it's told. We create original stories, develop interactive moments, craft visuals, record and design audio, and perform the works live. Tiny Box Theater asks our audiences to reimagine what stories look and sound like and to find theatricality in small moments. Collaborators have included artists Anthony Baus & Patrick Byrnes, performer Nico Grelli, musician Eric Holm, voice-over artist Elizabeth Klett, comedian Jason Planitzer, and designers/box operators Maeve O’Sullivan & Grace Trimble. Tiny Box Theater has performed at the NYC, Boston, and Toronto Figment Festivals, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, at Luna Stage in New Jersey, the LIC Arts Open in Long Island City, and Madison Square Park’s Kids Fest. https://tinyboxtheater.com/){kind=link}
Jody Christopherson
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Lost My Train Of Thought is an interactive theatrical story that unfolds through card catalogs, dollhouse miniatures, Radioptican Magic Lanterns, and an antique windup tin train.
Lost My Train Of Thought plays in rep with Natalie Johnsonius Neubert’s Parlor Poems, 6/8 and 6/9.
Tell us about your show? In your own words, what is it/ what is it/what is it about?
Lost My Train of Thought is an interactive theatrical story that unfolds through card catalogs, dollhouse miniatures, and an antique windup tin train. The main character, The Librarian, brings the audience along on a series of six journeys, some for work, some for family, some for pleasure. On each journey audience members must make a choice, and each outcome affects the story being told. This 45-minute piece contains more than 128 possible story variants. It’s going to be fun for us to discover which stories the audiences chooses in the moment and we hope it’s fun for the audience to make those choices and experience the outcomes.
Sarah is our solo performer for this piece and, in addition to working with Tiny Box Theater, she’s also a librarian. The antique tin train is The Joy Line, which inspired Joy, the writer, to create a piece around it. We like these meta elements a lot. Justin is often on the road, traveling for work, and with that comes a series of encounters with people and places of varying amounts and qualities of time. Lost My Train of Thought explores how we catalog time: is it borrowed, bought, saved, stolen, wasted, or lost?
What multidisciplinary elements does it include and how are they used? How are they unique?
Lost My Train of Thought uses elements of toy and object theater and inspiration from gamebook and branching plot novels. The show features one live performer (the Librarian), two train and card catalog operators (the Engineers) and a pre-recorded voice over. The performer and the voice over instruct audience members to participate in the storytelling, either by speaking lines, joining the action, adding miniature set pieces, or by making a plot choice.
Why do you make theater? Can you talk about the medium and what it lends to your work?
The Tiny Box Theater experience for both audience and performer is one that pushes us to reimagine what stories look and sound like, and to find theatricality in small moments. We invite our audiences to get close, listen carefully, and find themselves in part of the piece. We make theater to experiment with performance, objects, and narratives and actively engage our audiences in the storytelling.
This is our first longer and larger performance. Our ten other pieces are all just a few minutes each, for a few people at a time, and take place inside of repurposed boxes using only pre-recorded sound. Lost My Train of Thought incorporates boxes—in this case, card catalogs—but the action is live and takes place on a stage instead of inside a portable box. As with our other pieces, Lost My Train of Thought features audience interaction with miniatures and other objects. Here, the antique tin train figures prominently and each of the six journeys features a different layout for the train tracks that is incorporated into the storytelling.
Objects, whether nostalgic, familiar, DIY, or brand new, all have inherent stories in them. We like to take aspects of these preconceptions and twist and turn them into stories of our own devising.
TINY BOX THEATER was founded by Sarah Murphy, Justin Steeve, and Joy Tomasko in 2015. They originally met last century during undergraduate studies in theater at Drew University. Tiny Box Theater works are a theatrical hybrid of a pop-up book, diorama, radio play, live performance, and toy theater. Our small, portable venues invite individual audiences to get close. The characteristics of the boxes themselves help inform the story and the style in which it’s told. We create original stories, develop interactive moments, craft visuals, record and design audio, and perform the works live. Tiny Box Theater asks our audiences to reimagine what stories look and sound like and to find theatricality in small moments. Collaborators have included artists Anthony Baus & Patrick Byrnes, performer Nico Grelli, musician Eric Holm, voice-over artist Elizabeth Klett, comedian Jason Planitzer, and designers/box operators Maeve O’Sullivan & Grace Trimble. Tiny Box Theater has performed at the NYC, Boston, and Toronto Figment Festivals, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, at Luna Stage in New Jersey, the LIC Arts Open in Long Island City, and Madison Square Park’s Kids Fest. https://tinyboxtheater.com/