Work
Red Phone
Maker Boca del Lupo · Work date 2016 · Medium telephone · Role work
Description
Two enclosed plexiglass phone booths joined by a phone line and two red handsets. A teleprompter in each booth runs a script controlled live by a technician; twenty scripts by playwrights from across Canada, all on the theme of urgency. No participant has rehearsed their part. Originally 2016; restaged in fall 2020 and toured to Montreal, St. John's and Fredericton, billed as the first theater production to tour Canada since the pandemic began.
Source. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-47312-8_8
The two participants are co-located at a venue, in adjacent booths, but speak only through a real handset and line. Coded as telephone on the grounds that the line is the medium; the co-location is a staging fact.
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 headphonesnoP
Red handsets, not headphones.
- Participants move through space as part of the worknoP
Each participant stays in a booth.
- Audio technology is necessaryyesP
The phone line between the booths is the work.
- Site-, situation- or language-specificSituationI
Requires two strangers, two booths and a venue — a circumstance rather than a named place.
- 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 scripts by playwrights.
- Intended to be understood as theateryesP
Twenty commissioned scripts, presented as theater.
- Accidental real-world sights and sounds are importantnoI
Enclosed plexiglass booths; the environment is controlled out.
- Spectator must participateyesP
The participants read the script aloud to each other. There is no work otherwise.
- Has live performers other than the participantsnoP
Both parties are participants. The technician runs the teleprompter but does not perform.
- Involves game playnoI
No rules, objective or resolution state.
- Uses props other than the listening devicenoI
The teleprompter is read, not handled.