TERRAIN VAGUE
Terrain Vague [Empty Space] is a performance-excavation of one square block, between Main and Spring,
Second and Third, in Downtown Los Angeles, where I live in the 110 year-old Higgins Building. That square block
is the largest, most expensive, contiguous piece of undeveloped land in Downtown LA. Mostly parking lots dotted with a handful of hundred-plus year-old Main Street commercial buildings. All tear-downs. It’s Skid Row, a block away from City Hall.
It’s unceded Gabrielino-Tongva land. Its more recent history is resplendent with the stories of powerful denizens of early LA — mostly unknown, mostly women — who lived and worked here.
The phrase terrain vague (French: idiomatically, "empty lot") was coined by the Spanish architect Ignasi de Solà-Morales to celebrate the unbridled possibility of empty space at the center of a metropolis. I apply it to this empty space at the heart of our city, which will soon be up for grabs to the highest bidder, once the construction of the adjacent subway station is finally finished, and the blight of COVID subsides.
Meanwhile, before plans, before blueprints, before any thought of building permits, anything is possible. I aim to dig the place up, re-embody its people, name its history, amplify its meaning and value, beyond its being fresh meat for rabid developers.
I work in collaboration with the owner of the land. Plans/prototypes for the project have variously included live, live-stream, and recorded virtual performance, accessed through QR codes posted on the streets adjacent to sites that inspired the work; as well as a site-wide theme park-style re-creation of the ghost city, morphing into imaginations of what could be, moving forward, designed by young architects.
In my play The DIG, I play an archaeologist digging in Arab-Hebrew Jaffa. Here, too, I dig in my own backyard.
Here, performatively, I'm a shape-shifter, exhuming, offering my body and spirit to be inhabited by various wild-mind specters of the place, and, like an architect, positing what might be.
Terrain Vague [Empty Space] is a performance-excavation of one square block, between Main and Spring,
Second and Third, in Downtown Los Angeles, where I live in the 110 year-old Higgins Building. That square block
is the largest, most expensive, contiguous piece of undeveloped land in Downtown LA. Mostly parking lots dotted with a handful of hundred-plus year-old Main Street commercial buildings. All tear-downs. It’s Skid Row, a block away from City Hall.
It’s unceded Gabrielino-Tongva land. Its more recent history is resplendent with the stories of powerful denizens of early LA — mostly unknown, mostly women — who lived and worked here.
The phrase terrain vague (French: idiomatically, "empty lot") was coined by the Spanish architect Ignasi de Solà-Morales to celebrate the unbridled possibility of empty space at the center of a metropolis. I apply it to this empty space at the heart of our city, which will soon be up for grabs to the highest bidder, once the construction of the adjacent subway station is finally finished, and the blight of COVID subsides.
Meanwhile, before plans, before blueprints, before any thought of building permits, anything is possible. I aim to dig the place up, re-embody its people, name its history, amplify its meaning and value, beyond its being fresh meat for rabid developers.
I work in collaboration with the owner of the land. Plans/prototypes for the project have variously included live, live-stream, and recorded virtual performance, accessed through QR codes posted on the streets adjacent to sites that inspired the work; as well as a site-wide theme park-style re-creation of the ghost city, morphing into imaginations of what could be, moving forward, designed by young architects.
In my play The DIG, I play an archaeologist digging in Arab-Hebrew Jaffa. Here, too, I dig in my own backyard.
Here, performatively, I'm a shape-shifter, exhuming, offering my body and spirit to be inhabited by various wild-mind specters of the place, and, like an architect, positing what might be.
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SAINT VIBIANA PRAY4US
Premiere, Son of Semele Solo Creation, Summer 2018.
Who is/was Vibiana, the patron saint of Los Angeles, and where is she now, when we need her?
Read about the saint and the show on LAIST: Suzanne Levy's Meet The Patron Saint Of LA You've Never Heard Of
Premiere, Son of Semele Solo Creation, Summer 2018.
Who is/was Vibiana, the patron saint of Los Angeles, and where is she now, when we need her?
Read about the saint and the show on LAIST: Suzanne Levy's Meet The Patron Saint Of LA You've Never Heard Of
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Video from a performance on the site of the Main Street Gym — created as a prototype for a virtual performance tour of the area. People walking Downtown follow posted QR codes to video about the history of the land on which they stand.
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DON'T FLINCH
Premiere, Son of Semele Solo Creation, Summer 2019.
In Don’t Flinch! Chaiken goes off in search of the legendary one-armed woman who trained alongside world-class boxers like then-Cassius Clay, Joe Frazier, and Sugar Ray Robinson, in the ring affectionately remembered as “America’s rattiest,” the Main Street Gym at Third and Main. With her signature mashup of deep research and making stuff up, Chaiken punches above her weight to conquer hand-eye coordination, navigate Downtown aggression, and take a punch without getting knocked out.
Premiere, Son of Semele Solo Creation, Summer 2019.
In Don’t Flinch! Chaiken goes off in search of the legendary one-armed woman who trained alongside world-class boxers like then-Cassius Clay, Joe Frazier, and Sugar Ray Robinson, in the ring affectionately remembered as “America’s rattiest,” the Main Street Gym at Third and Main. With her signature mashup of deep research and making stuff up, Chaiken punches above her weight to conquer hand-eye coordination, navigate Downtown aggression, and take a punch without getting knocked out.
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ON THE HOWL
We are looking down the long hall of an elegant historic residential loft building in Downtown Los Angeles. All marble, black and white tile. A vintage steel door is at the end of the hall. Stylish unit number.
It’s three in the morning. Hall lights have dimmed, to save energy. The door opens, revealing a woman in red and white striped pajamas, down parka, N95 mask. Pandemic grey hair, slept-upon. She waves her arms wildly into the hall outside the door for a long time (at least ten seconds) in an effort to trigger motion detectors, which trigger bright cool lights. She winces. She holds the door to the apartment wide open. It is dark inside. She tugs gently the end of a red leash. She takes a couple of bits of food out of a fanny pack around her waist, tosses them onto the hall floor, tugs more forcefully on the leash. She finally pulls a strong and fiercely resistant young DOG through the doorway; the dog is spread-eagled, buckled into a tightly fitting khaki harness (like a straight jacket) attached at the shoulder to the red leash. The DOG is played by an athletic young female. She is much larger than the woman. The size discrepancy is extreme. The DOG may appear to be cowering now, but she is a powerful, gorgeous creature. As the WOMAN pulls, the DOG, using the pressure of the woman’s hold on the leash, proceeds to worm her way out of the harness, Houdini-like. At some point in all this tugging, the steel door slams shut behind them, loudly, reverberating through the concrete halls, prompting every one of the seventy-odd dogs in the building to start howling from all corners. THE DOG says, Ha!! DARK ESTHER
This play was written to be performed in a parking lot. Dark Esther is Older than Time. She twirls round and round, swaying, on the center line between two parking spaces. She wears a twelve foot-wide wired crinoline (hoop skirt) covered with grass and vines, and a tailcoat with shirt-front and bow-tie. She wears a black COVID mask, painted with a broad red-lipped, white-toothed smile. When she removes the mask, she has the same red-lipped smile. Dark Esther might be bald; she might have ankle-length silver dreads, threaded with feathers and beads. She might be seven feet tall, on stilts. She is from here; she is from somewhere else. Her voice emanates from within the earth herself. SOUL PATROL
Commissioned for Son of Semele Solo Creation 2020, which never happened. Soul Patrol is based on the life and work of the little-known, but much beloved Queen of Skid Row, Sister Sylvia Creswell, who owned and operated a hostel for returning World War Two vets on Skid Row. The site later housed the American Indian Movement, which provided support for Native Americans who came in large numbers to Los Angeles in the wake of Relocation. |
Sister Sylvia Creswell, Queen of Skid Row
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