Theater
The Object Lesson
By Geoff Sobelle
Directed by David Neumann
*Winner of the 2014 Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh award
Do you have what you need? Do you need what you have? Imagine every “thing” that ever passed through your hands—a massive, meaningful, meaningless pile of junk that describes in debris your tiny human history.
With boxes stacked to the ceiling, physical theater artist Geoff Sobelle transforms the BAM Fisher into an epic storage facility of gargantuan proportion. The audience, free to roam and poke through the jumble, becomes immersed in this performance-installation that unpacks our relationship to everyday objects: breaking, buying, finding, fixing, trading, selling, stealing, storing, and becoming buried under a world of things. Hilarious and heartbreaking, The Object Lesson is a meditation on the stuff[1] we cling to and the crap we leave behind.
Scenic/Installation design by Steven Dufala
Lighting design by Christopher Kuhl
Sound design by Nick Kourtides
Development for The Object Lesson was supported by The Map Fund (supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), The Wyncote Foundation, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, an Independence Foundation Fellowship, the Philadelphia Live Arts Brewery (LAB) program and a commission from Lincoln Center Theater. Further development was supported by residencies at The Orchard Project, the Space on Ryder Farm and at The Yard, a multi-disciplinary dance space in Martha’s Vineyard.
Geoff Sobelle is a theater maker dedicated to the “sublime ridiculous.”