Seeing C. Smiles is a site-responsive, interactive performance that I wrote and delivered as part of ‘The Ivory Tower and The Open Worlds’ a series of performances curated by the CUNY PhD Theatre and Performance department practice+research ensemble at The Brick, a theater and performing arts venue in Brooklyn, NY. The performance featured glass vials filled with edible syrup from common milkweed flowers, which I foraged from Gateway National Park on the Rockaway Peninsula in NYC, where Seeing C. Smiles takes place.

In the piece, an encounter with a beached dolphin on the shore of Rockaway Beach during the biggest snowstorm of the year serves as a metaphor for shifting landscapes, unprecedented change in our waters and lands, changes in movement patterns, human and nonhuman migrations and the emergent obstacles. I was interested in how these shifts interact with simultaneous shifts in cultural and personal landscapes as outdated myths are discarded and new stories emerge from the cracks and crevices of our ongoing apocalyptic reality. The dolphin is a psychic token, a symbol for the messages we can receive from nature, and the transformations we endure through grief, psychologically and physically. Seeing C. Smiles amplifies a conversation about climate change and the marine life that currently resides in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of New York City.

Viewers of the performance were also given poured wax dolphin crayons made by my sister, Hilary Rappaport, prompting them to consider: Who is creating your story? What messages are being conveyed through non-human connections? Who is transforming? Who is trapped? Who has the power to decide who transforms?

Written, directed, and performed by Gilian Rappaport

Original score + sound: Alexandra Banhazl

Film projection: Olivia DelGandio

Stage direction: Kye Grant

Lighting design: Mo Geiger

Dolphin sculpture: Alana Miller

Vocal cameo (“Sister of the Sea”): Rachel Traub

Dolphin crayons: Hilary Rappaport

Photos by Alexi Kim, Alana Miller, and Gilian Rappaport

Drawing by Mo Geiger

Poster design by Gilian Rappaport

Dramaturg: Jess Applebaum

Participants in ‘The Ivory Tower and The Open Worlds’ + ‘Seeing C. Smiles’: Michael Reinsch, Cory Kram, Ari Wolff, Noah Ortega, Ray Goodwin, Emily Bivens, Diane Dwyer, Future Death Tool, Sylvain Souklaye, Shawn Escarciga, Jordan Deal, Kiera Bono, Darlene Litay, Rakhi Malhotro, Milton Loayza, Seth Caplan, Joe D, Esther Neff, Jasmeene Francois, Stephen Cedars, Philip Wiles, Lisa Schonberg, Josi Arias, Becca Kauffman, Donald Rappaport, Adam Rappaport, Wyatt Crane, Seth Caplan, Joe D’Espinosa, Alyssa Zucker, Andrew Spiro, Chloe Jacobs + open to the public

Curation, ‘The Ivory Tower and The Open Worlds’: CUNY PhD Theatre and Performance department practice+research ensemble, who are, alphabetically - Jess Applebaum, Stephen Cedars, Jasmeene Francois, Alyssa Hanley, Ash Marinaccio, Esther Neff, Philip Wiles.

Artistic Director, The Brick: Theresa Buchheister