Work
BLACK BOX
Maker Candle House · Work date 2019-12 · Medium telephone · Role work
Description
A psychodrama about a doomed airplane, told through black box recordings interspersed with phone calls between the pilot and co-pilot. About an hour. The reviewer describes the participant's position as that of a semi-passive observer, and then finds the role sharpening into something else: "a kind of confessor, jury, and judge."
Source. https://candlehouse.org
Part of Candle House's Under the Bed, a select-your-own-experience menu of remote one-to-one encounters reviewed in December 2019. Participants who booked four or more connections also received a call from the Operator, a host who framed the stories and remembered what the participant had already been through — cross-call memory, three years before the field noticed it.
Anatomy
Thirteen criteria after Lauren R. Beck. Each carries a source grade: M maker-confirmed, P published, F first-hand, I inferred by the compiler, ? not yet established. Definitions are on the anatomy page.
- Participants listen through headphonesnoI
A phone call.
- Participants move through space as part of the worknoI
The participant takes the call where they are.
- Audio technology is necessaryyesP
Recordings and calls are the whole delivery.
- Site-, situation- or language-specificnoI
Placeless; the aircraft is fictional.
- Engages with the history of a sitenoI
No documented past of a real place.
- Created for an urban environmentnoI
No urban dependence.
- Created as an artwork other than theaternoP
A theater company, presenting an encounter.
- Intended to be understood as theateryesP
Candle House frames its work as theater; the review treats it as performance throughout.
- Accidental real-world sights and sounds are importantunknown?
Not addressed.
Did you experience this? Tell us - Spectator must participatesometimesP
The participant is a "semi-passive observer" who becomes confessor, jury and judge — participation short of required, which is exactly what s is for.
- Has live performers other than the participantsyesP
Live performers on the calls between the recorded segments.
- Involves game playnoI
No rules, objective or resolution state.
- Uses props other than the listening deviceunknown?
Not addressed.
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