Show Response: this house is not a home

by Theresa Buchheister, https://theresabuchheister.com/

This is a response to performance written via memory.

Staff Picks has encouraged audience members to write the response, which has implied (up to this point) an immediacy. That is so valuable. How did you FEEL? What did you EXPERIENCE?

But, as a person who has entered their 20th year in NY and who sees over 400 shows/year, a response that I have become more and more interested in is memory. What sticks in the folds of my brain? What lives with me forever like a little ghost, possessing a part of my insides? What sneaks into my dreams years after the experience of the live show?

When I chose this house is not a home by Nile Harris as one of my Staff Picks, I did it because I saw the show in July and, even though I could not go again in January, I wanted to scream at everyone who missed it 6 months ago to take this opportunity and GO! Second chances are special. They don't come around all that often.

So, what do I remember? 

I remember thinking for the first time - Why do 501c3s exist?

I remember being scared that someone would get hurt in the bouncy castle.

I remember being amazed at that many adults in a bouncy castle.

I remember Crackhead Barney proclaiming that the whole audience was a bunch of theys.

I remember marveling multiple times - I have never seen that before! 

I remember being stunned by a dance moment.

I remember the monologue on the stairs.

I remember the rollgate going down in the back.

I remember getting fixated on the pressure to deliver.

As I try to type out what I remember, I am fixated on the pressure to deliver. I am deleting A LOT. I am fixated on trying to write eloquently about a show that is a full experience and is meant to be experienced. It feels heavy and like I cannot do it justice. Like the google doc that inspired it, the show is living and present and impossible to freeze. It is important and hard to grasp. It is layered with absurdity and truth. It is a creation of this time and these artists, but it is also epic enough to reverberate forever.

this house is not a home ran from January 6th - January 14th at Abrons Arts Center as part of Under the Radar

Photo by Alex Munro