Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
So thats where I pushed play.
The first track ofCairnsbegins with a caution about cars, but I didnt see any.
I gave a couple of hopeful hoots under the 25th Street gate, but there wasnt an echo.
Maybe the aspens were just invisible?
Through my headphones, the sound of gravel crunching made the solid concrete of 25th Street feel … softer.
The right experience ofCairnsis lovely; the wrong one is magic.
Bells actual project, though, concerns different, more tangible rituals.
New York royalty, as Bell says.
Cairnsisnt primarily tour-guide stuff, though.
Look at a map, pick a place a few miles away and then go listen to Bell there.
The way she talks about the trees and the women weve buried will make your walk backseem completely different.
Youll know the piece is working on you for as long as city noise sounds like music.
It took me a full day before my mind readjusted and sirens sounded like emergencies again.
One of the surprises of pandemic theater-making has been this embrace of audio work.
I expected the experiments on video, the play readings, even the digital puppet shows.
Yet from Shakespeare to microdramas to sound-walks, thats where Ive found much of my favorite COVID-era theater.
After each short conversation, a stage manager carried us to a new interaction speed-dating for devices.
One of the actors was an old student of mine; we recognized each other at the same moment.
Another performer told me she had been abandoned by a potential lover who couldnt stand dating over FaceTime.
Ibeamedmy recognition and my sympathy through the camera.
How much emotion can you pour through a lens?
The show was an experiment in de-glossing video production.
How to make Zoom feel fresh again after all these months?
By roughing up its surface.
The feeds looked like crackly, noisy 80s TV which is to say, great.
I wanted to close my eyes to listen, not watch.
I wondered what it would have been like to hear the show while sitting under a tree in Green-Wood.
The voices and their troubles would have sighed into the wind.
