Seeing C. Smiles
Seeing C. Smiles, Gilian Rappaport’s site-responsive, interactive performance, opened 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 on Sunday, August 14 2022. It was performed at The Brick Theater, Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s primary incubator of innovative theater and performing arts. The performance features glass vials filled with edible syrup from common milkweed flowers, which Gilian wild foraged from Gateway National Park, which includes Fort Tilden on the Rockaway Peninsula in NYC, where Seeing C. Smiles takes place.
Written, directed, and performed by Gilian Rappaport Original score + sound: Alexandra BanhazlFilm projection: Olivia DelGandio Stage direction: Becca KauffmanLighting design: Mo GeigerDolphin sculpture: Alana MillerVocal cameo (“Sister of the Sea”): Rachel TraubDolphin crayons: Hilary RappaportThe Brick in Brooklyn, NYAugust 11 - August 14, 2022~ Presented at The Brick for The Ivory Tower and The Open Worlds, a four-day hybrid devised work and conference created/curated by PhD students in the Theatre and Performance program at CUNY Graduate Center ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Performance at The Brick, Brooklyn, NY
August 14, 2022
Seeing C. Smiles
During The Ivory Tower and the Open Worlds, curated by the CUNY PhD Theatre and Performance department practice+research ensemble
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The Ivory Tower and the Open Worlds
“Across four days, overlapping and interrelated individuals and assemblies share ways of knowing and critique bases for “knowledge” through a hybrid devised work/conference Audiences are invited to come and go throughout the weekend, encountering actions, social processes, score-based structures, papers, and other forms of performance.
The Ivory Tower and the Open Worlds is a hybrid devised work and conference created/curated by PhD students in the Theatre and Performance program at CUNY Graduate Center. Through this project, we seek praxis, that is, thinking-actions and practice-theories that contest, challenge, dismantle, and move across divisions between institutional hegemonies and “othered” and “backgrounded” ways of knowing and seeing. Open to the public across four days, towers are torn down in pursuit of “epistemic justice” and worlds are opened through the sharing and trusting of multiplicit (un)knowings as they are expressed through individual and social bodies.”
- CUNY PhD Theatre and Performance department practice+research ensemble
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Seeing C. Smiles, Gilian Rappaport’s site-responsive, interactive performance, opened 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 on Sunday, August 14 2022. It was performed at The Brick Theater, Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s primary incubator of innovative theater and performing arts. The performance features glass vials filled with edible syrup from common milkweed flowers, which Gilian wild foraged from Gateway National Park, which includes Fort Tilden on the Rockaway Peninsula in NYC, where Seeing C. Smiles takes place.
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, and 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 acts as a reflection on the messages we can receive from nature, and transformations through grief, both psychologically and physically. While not strictly site-specific, 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, 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?
Gilian has a longstanding interest in what we can learn from nature, and the paths to get there, particularly in relation to her experience living on the Rockaway Peninsula in NYC, observing the urban-nature divide.
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Written, directed, and performed by Gilian Rappaport
Original score + sound: Alexandra Banhazl
Film projection: Olivia DelGandio
Stage direction: Becca Kauffman
Lighting design: Mo Geiger
Dolphin sculpture: Alana Miller
Vocal cameo (“Sister of the Sea”): Rachel Traub
Dolphin crayons: Hilary Rappaport
Dramaturg: Jess Applebaum
Photos by Alexi Kim, Alana Miller, and Gilian Rappaport
Drawing by Mo Geiger
Poster design by Gilian Rappaport
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
The Brick in Brooklyn, NY
August 14, 2022