Reviewed by:

• The Watering Holeby Lynn Nottage and Miranda Haymon
• Danielle Drees

The Watering Holeflooded New York's Pershing Square Signature Center, filling three stages, the lobby, and various backstage spaces in this off-Broadway venue with water-themed multimedia installations. Although The Watering Holeprimarily deployed water as a figure for communal healing, it also suggested that water can be a powerful force, sweeping away the old and clearing space for something new. Like a flood, The Watering Hole—helmed by Signature's resident playwright Lynn Nottage—aimed at a deep unmooring of American theatre's structures. This goal aligned with the broader social project announced in a 2020 open letter to "White American Theater," signed by 300 BIPOC theatre artists (including Nottage), calling for "a transformation of our theatrical ecosystems" and demanding that American theatres remake themselves as antiracist, equitable institutions—not just in the heated moment of summer 2020, but for the long haul. By inviting seventeen artists of color to participate in creating The Watering Hole, Nottage and Miranda Haymon experimented with one iteration of that transformative vision. The Watering Holeraised new challenges for accessibility while charting a course toward a more humane and reflective theatre industry.

The Watering Holeoutlined expansive aspirations for theatre on a hand-painted banner in the Signature's lobby. The banner announced "a desire for a Theatre that can sustain the complexity and the multiplicity of our desires," including "artists understood as human beings," "absented voices made visible," and a "goodbye to the product over process mentality." In keeping with the desire to center process over product, the ten fragmentary pieces that comprised The Watering Holefelt like first drafts of artistic works. After entering with timed tickets, spectators were divided into groups of four and escorted through the building by a guide who stopped us for five to ten minutes at each small installation. Most were prerecorded solo performances. At "This Room Is a Broken Heart" in the building lobby, we watched videos of a butoh dancer and listened to a song on loop while looking at two small, elaborately decorated boats. At "Freequency," we sat on a stage in the dark on small metal stools, facing empty audience seating, while a recorded voice-over invited us to align our chakras. The pieces had a raw, unfinished quality, stripped of the many layers of production and revision that typify off-Broadway theatre, exposing the messy process of imagining a new future for the industry. One video installation repeatedly asked: "Can we come back when this has become someplace new?" Another closed with the half-question "A whole new paradigm for theater, right?" While it is hard to imagine The Watering Holebeing revived in this version, I hope some of its forward-looking component pieces can go on to be workshopped, expanded, and restaged as the work toward equitable theatre continues.

The Watering Holerooted its work to reimagine the theatre industry in individual reflection, rather than interaction. Many of the installations featured recorded monologues or other solo performances; some asked spectators to reflect on their own needs as well. In one monologue, which played over a speaker as spectators climbed Signature's main staircase, Nottage recounted a "massive race riot" in 1900 very near Signature's current location: "Black folks were . . . beaten and dragged from the street" by white people, with no protection from the police, until a "massive thunderstorm . . . in the middle of the summer" ended the riot. While a deluge of water may have saved lives that day, Nottage's speech implicated the white bystanders, who were a less reliable intervention than random rainstorms. In the final piece of The Watering Hole, viewers were given miniature boat sails and invited to write down what they needed to feel safe, before pinning their sails to the mast of a boat moored in the theatre's lobby. Perhaps that boat might sail forward to Signature's next production, with a record of its patrons' needs onboard.

These needs...

审核人：

• 林恩·诺塔奇和米兰达·海蒙的《水坑》
• 丹妮尔·德里斯

水坑淹没了纽约的潘兴广场签名中心，以水为主题的多媒体装置填满了这个非百老汇场地的三个舞台、大厅和各种后台空间。虽然The Watering Hole最初将水作为公共治疗的形象，但它也表明水可以成为一种强大的力量，扫除旧物并为新事物腾出空间。像洪水一样，水坑——由 Signature 的常驻剧作家 Lynn Nottage 掌舵——旨在深入解构美国剧院的结构。这一目标与 2020 年致“美国白人剧院”的 300 名 BIPOC 戏剧艺术家（包括 Nottage）签署的公开信中宣布的更广泛的社会项目相一致，呼吁“改变我们的戏剧生态系统”，并要求美国剧院将自己重塑为反种族主义、公平的制度——不仅是在 2020 年夏季的炎热时刻，而且是长期的。通过邀请 17 位有色人种艺术家参与创作The Watering Hole，Nottage 和 Miranda Haymon 尝试了这种变革性愿景的一次迭代。水坑提出了新的挑战，同时为更人性化和反思的戏剧行业制定了路线。

The Watering Hole在 Signature 大厅的手绘横幅上勾勒出对剧院的广阔愿景。横幅上宣布了“对一个能够维持我们欲望的复杂性和多样性的剧院的渴望”，其中包括“被理解为人类的艺术家”、“缺席的声音变得可见”以及“告别产品而不是过程的心态”。为了满足将过程置于产品之上的愿望，构成The Watering Hole的十个碎片感觉就像是艺术作品的初稿。凭限时票入场后，观众被分成四人一组，并由一名导游护送通过大楼，他在每个小型装置处停下我们五到十分钟。大多数是预先录制的独奏表演。在大楼大厅的“这个房间是一颗破碎的心”，我们观看了一个舞者的视频，一边看着两艘装饰精美的小船一边循环播放一首歌曲。在“Freequency”，我们坐在黑暗中的小金属凳子上的舞台上，面对空荡荡的观众座位，同时录制的画外音邀请我们调整脉轮。这些作品具有原始的、未完成的质量，剥离了非百老汇剧院典型的多层制作和修改，暴露了想象该行业新未来的混乱过程。一个视频装置反复问：“当这里变成新的地方时，我们能回来吗？” 另一个以半个问题“戏剧的全新范式，对吗？”结束。虽然很难想象水坑在这个版本中被复活，我希望它的一些前瞻性组件可以随着公平剧院工作的继续进行工作、扩展和重新上演。

The Watering Hole将其工作植根于个人反思而不是互动中重新构想戏剧行业。许多装置以录制的独白或其他独奏表演为特色。有些人还要求观众反思自己的需求。在一段独白中，当观众爬上 Signature 的主楼梯时，在扬声器上播放，Nottage 讲述了 1900 年在 Signature 当前位置附近发生的“大规模种族骚乱”：“黑人被……殴打并被白人从街上拖走”，在没有警察保护的情况下，直到一场“盛夏的大雷暴……”结束了骚乱。虽然那天的洪水可能挽救了生命，但诺塔奇的演讲牵连了白人旁观者，与随机暴雨相比，他们的干预不太可靠。在最后一块The Watering Hole向观众提供了微型船帆，并被邀请写下他们需要什么才能感到安全，然后将帆固定在停泊在剧院大厅的一艘船的桅杆上。也许那艘船可能会驶向 Signature 的下一部作品，并记录船上顾客的需求。

这些需求...