January 2020 NYC
We began the day with a workshop session for our pilot year of using the Connector App. I was super nervous as I prepared because this felt like a different type of performance. I’ve done presentations before but this was about “tech” so I watched many online presentations of other folks presenting their apps. Turns out it was just like presenting about transforming your organization, or why being accessible is awesome. Presenting is just telling folks about something, which is easy when it’s something you believe in.
Afterwards we held a gathering from across the country, at a bar in the East Village, for a lively fundraiser celebrating the beginning of EMFUSA2020. By the end of the night, a thematically appropriate $2,020 was raised to support the year’s efforts. There were fabulous grilled cheese sandwiches that I highly recommend.
After many selfies with our NET community and the official speeches were done I left the party and went to see the NY Neofuturists “The Infinite Wrench “. It’s provocative and engaging experimental theater. The content was full of gender and racial justice, autobiographical vulnerability, playing with high stakes presentation of low stakes stories, a few really silly puns, and a spot on Yoda joke. I sat next to a Iranian immigrant physics student and his friend and mine artistic director Rob Neil. He’d never been to a Neofuturist show and was LOVING it. I was too.
The Infinite Wrench is a mechanism that unleashes a barrage of two-minute plays for a live audience. Each play offers something different, be it funny, profound, elegant, disgusting, topical, irrelevant, terrifying, or a song; all are truthful and tackle the here-and-now, inspired by the lived experiences of the performers. With new plays every week, The Infinite Wrench is the Neo-Futurists’ ongoing and ever-changing attempt to shift the conventions of live performance and speak to audiences including those unreached or unmoved by traditional theater.
http://www.nyneofuturists.org/tiw/
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