Boozy Organizing Thoughts
Boozy takes place in a large diffuse space with unconventional seating placement for audience. There are 9-12 bisected, dioramas encased in white Corbusier-esque concrete boxes; these are “scattered” around the space. In each diorama exists a different location and/or genre. One might be a park scene, another might a plexi-covered room filled with bunnies, another might be a war room where conspiracy theories are hatched, another might be an enormous TV screen, another might house the “booth.” Each depicts (literally, metaphorically, didactically, or dissonantly) a different aspect contributing to the thesis we build. This organization represents zoning principles.
The show is explained through switching focus from one room to the next.
We find that there is a general despondency that pervades each of these housing units. Particularly when scenes are not “on,” we are able to see these people depressed, confused, too much time on their hands, sometimes lingering outside their housing units. (reference points: Target Margin, Dogville) Why are they depressed? There’s too much space. Not enough connections between people. Not enough daily strictures.
Occasionally, apart from the narrative threads we pick up and the different genres they are forcefully adhering to, we pick up on a song that unifies all of them where all scenes are “on” at the same time. This is not demonstrative but rather just atmospheric, a la Magnolia.
Within each of these genre-based dioramas, there is an ability to transcend the unit and enter into a central playing space: this occurs at moments of extreme emotion a la how direct address is often used in plays or breaking into song or dance in a musical. There is a consistent idiom and playing style when actors enter this central area. There is a religious fervor to their emotionalism. They decry their depression and long for a solution in urban planning that will make them happy again.
[This is not to give the impression that there will be narrative strands, from room to room, that link or reside in the same psychological reality. Rather, these scenes should be scattered through time and space (not necessarily set within the world of a room) and abstractness; the rooms are only ways to define the individual playing spaces and lend coherence for when we revisit each individual room.]
There is some sort of cultural anthropologist/lecturer/Ebeneezer Howard-type within a home that has a plan: consolidation of space and higher population density will solve all problems. (Is this the frame or a part of the narrative or a meta element?)
As the show progresses, the units collide and form a larger structure. Certain dioramas are left behind and certain people are displaced and lurk around this structure creating a visibly unsafe environment that is left unacknowledged. Those who are still flush with housing live with one another in a cramped communal setting, some sharing apartments where formally they had their own. But they are happy.