7 Surprisingly Busy Days in the Life of an Experimental Theater Maker

7 Surprisingly Busy Days in the Life of an Experimental Theater Maker

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January is known as a time when New York commercial theater recovers from its holiday bender and takes a break from openings.

It’s another story for the experimental performance scene, which struts its stuff at festivals such as Under the Radar, Prototype and Exponential. For someone like Peter Mills Weiss, it’s go time.

“January is this incredible crush of everyone doing everything all the time, and by the seat of everyone’s pants,” Weiss, 36, said over the phone. “I’m happy to support in all the ways that I can.”

Weiss wears many hats, most prominently as a creator with his regular collaborator, Julia Mounsey, of such unsettling, darkly funny shows as “While You Were Partying“ at Soho Rep (2021) and “Open Mic Night” at last year’s Under the Radar.

In addition, he and Ann Marie Dorr are joint interim producing artistic directors of the Brooklyn avant-hub the Brick Theater and its annex, Brick Aux. Weiss, who lives in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, also juggles projects as an actor and a sound designer. “I like being a jack-of-all-trades,” he said.

Weiss kept a diary of his cultural diet during a mid-January week that culminated with his participation in “Soho Rep Is Not a Building. Soho Rep Had a Building…,” a 12-hour “marathon wake” in honor of Walkerspace, the company’s former home in TriBeCa. These are edited excerpts from phone and email interviews.

Because they’re moving out of their space, Soho Rep had no chairs anymore for “Soho Rep Is Not a Building,” so I offered 38 chairs from Life World, which is this sort of comedy venue I helped run (we’re in the midst of looking for another space). They’re the original folding chairs from the Ontological-Hysteric Theater.

I hopped out of the truck so I could make it to the first day of rehearsal for a reading of “Future Wife,” a play by Reid Tang directed by Nazareth Hassan, at Ars Nova.

Afterward I rushed to the simultaneous load-ins for Ella Lee Davidson’s show, “Sapphire,” at the Brick, and “Cool Zone: The Lost Episode” at the Aux.

I spent the morning going back and forth between the Brick and the Aux and met with Ann Marie Dorr. We’re interim so we’re mostly stewarding Theresa Buchheister’s [the former Brick artistic director] legacy programming. I did help sort of articulate the curatorial modality for ?!: New Works, which is the open-access program we do in April.

Later I spent about three hours working on my eulogy for Walkerspace for Saturday. I also made chicken stock. I like to cook, it’s one of the ways I unwind.

I met Julia at the Aux at 10 a.m. We read through this thing that’s still in process. It’s an adaptation so it’s a weird zone for us — we’re interested right now in doing the opposite of what people might expect from us.

Then I hustled to Ars Nova, we rehearsed the reading for two hours, and I went back to the Aux. After a thrilling bout of admin, I went to the “Sapphire” opening night, part of Exponential. The play was really funny and provocative in a lot of ways. The audience really ate it up.

I slept in and then went through a full day of rehearsal for the reading. It was the principal staging of the little things that happen in readings, like when you stand up, when you sit down, that kind of stuff.

That night I went to Matthew Antoci and Meaghan Robichaud’s “MEOW!” at Loading Dock. I’d never been to that space before, surprisingly, and it’s such a cool spot. It was one of those shows that’s just total, total chaos in a way that I really love. I got roasted in the middle of the show because Meaghan was doing some sort of harangue about how millennials suck and she asked “Who’s a millennial in the audience?” I participate every time if I’m asked to participate, so I raised my hand. She’s, I believe, a Zoomer, and so had a bone to pick with my generation, and I think that’s chill.

Back home I ate half a sleeve of Club Crackers, tried to play a video game and failed, and went to bed.

The reading at Ars Nova went well. I thought it was no disaster and the play is really cool. I don’t act a ton for other folks so it’s always a kind of experience for me. In the evening I went to see “Cool Zone” at the Aux, a sort of anti-fascist puppetry drag extravaganza. It was really fun, and very sold out.

Saturday was insane, with “Soho Rep Is Not a Building” from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Eric Ting had commissioned 11 eulogies, with around hundred people reading them, each with their vibe. Around 7 p.m. Carmelita Tropicana and I began hosting. We had basically exchanged, like, four text messages about it as a plan. She wanted to do the [grieving] ritual of keriah — not exactly the ritual, but something like it — so we prepped one of her pant legs to rip up. I was overzealous in my ripping and she got mad at me, like, “Peter, it’s cold outside!” I found a bunch of binder clips and got her pants together again. William Burke, the box-office manager and co-chair of the Writer Director Lab, gave a bring-down-the-house speech about all the things he’s experienced over the years at Soho Rep. In comedy parlance, he destroyed. Kaye Hurley [Soho Rep’s marketing and media manager] and I took down all the posters in the lobby as people were leaving.

I went over to the Brick way later than I should have but “Sapphire” loaded out the night before. I caught the “Cool Zone” team at Poetica Coffee nearby and congratulated them. They really killed it and I was happy about that. I went home and it’s a blur to me. Oh, I ate pasta, watched some videos — I consume a steady diet of YouTube videos on a variety of topics — and attempted to do some administrative work. Maybe I succeeded or failed, I have no idea.



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