Just before the new Signature home opened in January 2012, members of the press were invited to an introductory tour of the facilities. Several groups formed for the walkabout. Frank Gehry, the Signature’s architect, led the one I joined. As a longtime fan of Gehry’s unique works, I made a point of asking him questions about this latest one. When I wanted to know what he saw as he wandered through this completed commission, he said, “I only see the mistakes.”
The reply—a comment many true artists would say about their output—came back to me as I made a similar jaunt through the Signature layout for The Watering Hole, a site-specific, immersive, 80-minute compendium of varied attitudes towards contemporary life that two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and Miranda Harmon have conceived and created.
I wondered whether The Watering Hole might come to be regarded as another Signature mistake filling Gehry’s vaunted walls. Probably not, surely not a big one. The impetus behind it gives the impression of being far too sincere, far too radiating from the heart at a time when artists are gathering around such urgent Pandemic-involved topics as the true meaning of democracy, isolation, and diversity.
Those concerns are rife throughout The Watering Hole, although it’s incumbent to report they may not be as cogently expressed as the many purveyors Nottage and Harmon have brought together to enliven the project clearly wish. I venture to say too many of the poetic feelings sought are not sufficiently realized. Too much of the contents are simplistic, clichéd, familiar while sometimes obscured. For instance, there’s a moment when patrons are asked to say their name so that their heart can hear it. Perhaps any individual person’s reaction to the entire enterprise might be extrapolated from that single request.
From start to finish patrons are guided to 10 open spaces or closed rooms where they’re asked to read writings on the walls, sometimes fill out responses, participate more actively or merely listen while talked at and exposed to videoed material. When needed, paper, pencils and postcards are provided.
As befits an offering called The Watering Hole, there is a water motif, often marked by elaborate sailboats, also covered with upbeat writings. (Emmie Finckel is the set designer.)
Time and a bit of disinclination keep me from going into detail about every destination. I will mention five, the first taking place on the staircase leading to the Signature main floor. There, attendees read and hear about ancestry from, among others, Nottage herself. Remaining aware of a wide ancestry span is emphasized. (All contributors to the entire piece are artists of color.) What the speakers have to say sounds a good deal like the rampant Ancestry television commercials running nowadays.
To the remaining four stops: The stop where postcards and pencils are disseminated asks those arriving to fill out the postcards on how we feel love and how we feel home. Having the postcards forwarded to prisoners is an option. At another stop a video of a physically-disabled man in his early twenties taking a dip, swimming a few laps, and talking about his love of water and passing on his enthusiasm to a nephew. Loving water—the symbolic meaning fairly obvious—is surely one point that The Watering Hole wishes to make forcibly.
The final stop is at the third of the three sailboats featured in the lobby, where the writing concentrates circumstances in which we feel safe. Again, pencils are provided for writing down on triangular pieces of paper (i.e., sail-like) how, where, and when the participant feels safe. The paper is then attached to the sailboat rigging for others to read. I wrote “Good Health.”
I’ve saved my favorite room for last. On the floor of the room is a truncated keyboard, instantly reminiscent of the one Tom Hanks dances on in Big. After listening to some chat that didn’t engage me too strongly, I was invited to make like Tom Hanks. You can bet I did. I two-footed “Chopsticks”—until the widening stance was too much to keep me upright. So yes, there is some fun to be had at The Watering Hole.
In addition to Nottage, Haymon, and Finckel, those creating the event are: Christine Anderson, Matt Barbot, Ryan J. Haddad, Phillip Howze, Haruna Lee, Charly Evon Simpson, Rhiana Yazzie, Vanessa German, nicHi douglas, Justin Ellington, Montana Levi Blanko, Amith Chandrashaker, lyvon E., and Campbell Silverstein. The estimable Liza Colon-Zayas is one of the actors heard but not seen.
Describing the multi-media, live-actor-free piece, I included above the much-bandied words “site specific” and ‘immersive.” It’s high-time another appropriate designation is added: perambulatory. Indisputably, perambulatory theater is with us now. That’s if this entry as well at Seven Deadly Sins, currently taking place in Tribeca and, earlier this year, the Engarde Arts A Dozen Dreams are considered.
A last aviso: At a production called The Watering Hole—during which repeated allusions to water can make a person thirsty—a ticket buyer might reasonably expect to find actual drinking water. Not here, for Covid-19 protocols. Even the water fountains just outside the restrooms have cups covering the spouts. The only water spotted on the wayward way are decal droplets and meandering river flows applied to the Signature floors and hallways. Whether water brought in during the current hot weather is allowed better be checked with management beforehand. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge lamented in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”
The Watering Hole opened July 1, 2021, at Signature Center and runs through August 8. Tickets and information: signaturetheatre.org
