LOS ANGELES — The MorYork Art Gallery has a lot of different art on its walls and within its walls and right now, that includes theater.
The gallery in Highland Park is one of five locations featured in the latest theatrical tour offered by The Roots and Wings Project. Founder and Artistic Director Jesse Bliss said the company has done site-specific tours before — an undertaking she refers to as the Olympics of theater.
“I like to do site-specific work because it shows the power of the human spirit in an environment,” she explained. “It’s much easier to perform theater in a traditional theatrical setting versus out in the elements, with all of the unpredictability that occurs.”
And she really means out in the elements. Luminous Streets takes audiences from place to place, popping into businesses near 50th and York to view works written for those spaces. Or at least near them, in the case of Banish him by Tyree Marshall.
“It was developed specifically for this sidewalk outside of Café De Leche,” Bliss said, standing on the corner in front of the coffeeshop.
The short pieces are written by different playwrights but centered on one theme: women’s survival and pursuit of justice.
The women in these plays are dealing with issues like domestic violence, alcoholism, poverty — issues that Bliss said The Roots and Wings Project has often tackled over its 20-year history as a “femme-charged, socially transformative theater company.”
“As women, we are definitely still fighting for a world that has equity and justice,” she explained. “My mother had more rights than my daughter has.”
Playwright and producer Roger Q. Mason has worked with Bliss for years. For them, projects like this are all about creating spaces for marginalized voices, including transgender and gender nonconforming writers.
“Statistically, we know that we don’t have enough stories about women and femme folks and, you know, as a TGNC person, we certainly don’t have enough stories by and about and with people that live outside of the binary,” they said. “To me, any time you get to amplify and support a femme or femme-presenting artist, it’s chipping away at the bias that silences the voices that need to be heard.”
(Spectrum News/Tara Lynn Wagner)
Including incarcerated women. The project also runs a writing program at the women’s prison in Chino, something Bliss is particularly passionate about.
“We consider those writers every single bit of part of our company as anyone doing work out here,” she stressed. “We really try to bridge the worlds where we see the work as one.”
In a way, Mason says, all theater is site specific. Audiences enter an environment created for them by artists. Being in a non-traditional setting may require a little creative thinking, a degree of trust and a willingness to go on the journey.
“Site specific theater, I think, is just a beautiful reminder that we’re always present and we should always be in the moment when we receive theatrical work,” they said.
Bliss agrees. The world has become so disconnected, she said, in part because of technology, and she sees live theater as a way to break out of that pattern.
“You need to put your phone down and be in time and space with other people,” Bliss explained.
And that space doesn’t need to be a traditional theater for that to be true.
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