Joshua William Gelb

TiQ - Topside by Scott R. Sheppard - featuring Joshua William Gelb

interviewed by Elena Araoz, with Katharine Matthias

Elena Araoz: Your work with your company Theater In Quarantine creates exactly what so many people miss most about live performance: “What I miss is the actors being right in front of me and that feeling that anything can happen and anything can go wrong. I miss that magic that is created.” It's one thing for Zoom to go on the fritz for a second, we ignore that, that’s not something audiences miss, but it's another thing to really watch something unexpected happen. During the mishap the other day with your television prop, what was that like for you as a performer, and have you heard any feedback from audience members who were watching at the moment?

Joshua William Gelb: I think people were frightened of course, frightened for me, and some people thought it was part of the show. And that's totally understandable, of course. There is that element of liveness or that element of shedenfruede. It's not the first strange thing that's happened while I've been performing these shows. An ex-girlfriend called me repeatedly during one of my performances, interrupted and accidentally cut off the entire live feed so… It's been very difficult, working through with my collaborators, the question of how do we actually troubleshoot when things go wrong. I'm in the closet. There's no one else with me. I can't read the chat. My phone is my camera, so there's a very limited toolbox in terms of how we're able to make sure everything's going correctly. I think a couple weeks ago I did an entire performance not realizing that the camera wasn't on or that it wasn't connecting through the livestream. So it's not without its little failures, but that’s what makes it live, right?

EA: You have been doing both videos, that I'm assuming are quite edited, and then you've also been doing live productions. Do you feel a difference in the way you perform for one versus the other?

JWB: Oh, definitely, or rather I feel a difference in the way I prepare for one versus the other. Anytime I start talking to a collaborator, the first question is, do you want this to be something that's pre-recorded or do you want this to be something live, because they're very different processes?

I try not to do too much editing, or I try to limit my editing of the pre-recorded videos to the same sort of editing I could do live. But instead of going through the process of doing all of that programming through Isadora, which is what I use to do my video processing, I'll just do it in anything with editing software, and it's much faster and easier.

That being said, this question of what makes live performance gets to, in my mind, the heart of why these processes are different, and clearly it's that if I'm doing it live. the work has to be repeatable. You have to actually rehearse, and that is very different from the work I do that's more pre-recorded, which even though I’ll still rehearse it, I'll have a sense of what it wants to be. I can do as many takes as I want. And I'm just looking for that one good take, and that's the difference. Whereas with the live shows, I have to - master is is a strong word, given that these processes have two weeks [of process and rehearsal] total. But nonetheless, I have to at least be capable of repeating the actions, which is why I do two performances a night because I think repetition is inherent in and important to the definition of theater in this moment.

EA: In every project you've been using different collaborators, though it seems like the same choreographer. I'm curious about how you pick the right collaborator for this kind of work and also how you learn choreography through this distance?

JWG: So the choreographer is KatieRose McLaughlin, and she's a choreographer I've worked with for many years now, and so we do have a real shorthand in our collaboration. And that's why she was the first person I called when I started playing with the space, and it's made working remotely much easier. We have a pretty standard Zoom setup. I’m able to see both the actual frame that I'm using, I'm able to see KatieRose, and KatieRose is also able to see me in this sort of standard Zoom format. So I use two cameras, which is what makes it slightly more tolerable. It's not perfect, and we're just, you know, troubleshooting and managing the trial and error, all the time. Zoom had an update a couple weeks ago where they suddenly made my camera that I was using to show the frame of the closet unreadable. And I had to do all of these little coding backdoor entrances to get it readable again. So we're often fighting the technology.

So finding collaborators who are interested in doing this - KatieRose has been really wonderful because it's been a way to find the people who are excited about this type of work, and they really come to me in most cases. Very early on in the process. I did a large email to a bunch of artists I know and respect, and a couple got back to me, and those are the ones I've been building with since then.

In terms of choreography, right now our format is every two weeks we do a performance. We’re officially making every other two weeks a dance-dedicated performance evening of short-form dance works. And what's really exciting about that is KatieRose is really curating that, and she's going to not only be choreographing these pieces herself, but also be bringing in other points of reference.

EA: One of the things that I love about the way you described your company Theater In Quarantine is that it is a venue. And I'm curious about what made you choose the closet. What keeps you in the closet?

JWG: I mean, venue is the word for it. That's what keeps me there, because I see that as the stage. I'd always joked about wanting to do theater in the closet. It’s a fairly large space as far as closets go, although it's a small space as far as performance spaces go.
And when the theaters closed or when the quarantine and the pandemic and the stay-at-home orders came in, I just started finishing the closet, because it was an unfinished closet at the time. And among a bunch of other household odd jobs that I was doing, it was only when I realized that the aspect ratio of the closet was about the same as my iPhone that I started to imagine the closet as a sort of proscenium space. And that's why I immediately painted it white and started turning it into an actual performance space, the digital performance lab.

And thinking of it as a venue came a little bit later when I realized that I wasn't just interested in doing my own work, but was interested in trying to bring in other collaborators and even thinking of other writers and other directors and really opening it as a space that people can learn how to collaborate digitally and remotely. So that’s how it came about.

EA: Have you ever thought about using it not in the proscenium?

JWG: Yeah, I have; so far we haven't gotten there. We've tried some experiments and, you know, every time I step out of frame, for instance, I find it to really ruin the experience of of the closet. So we've yet to do that right. We are starting to play with what it means to bring in other performers into the box. So we've been projecting performers into the box. And we're going to do more of that in upcoming pieces, which allows us to sort of stay in frame but also elsewhere. We're also starting to play with the sort of negative space around the frame and how that is also a sort of platform for storytelling and a space that can be designable.

I think in general, we’ve been trying to avoid engaging with the sort of Zoom thing that everyone else is playing with, because we see ourselves as antithetical to all of that work. Although in our Hypochondriac piece, we start to nod to it a little bit more. But that being said, I'd be excited to think about playing with it outside of the proscenium and I don't know what that would look like. I wonder what you think that would look like.

EA: Have you brought the camera inside the box?

JWG: We started playing with multiple cameras and close ups and that sort of thing, and that's always very exciting. My dream is to get a nice dolly track that I can put around something. You know, right now, it's always just the limitations of what I can build and what the technology allows, but that's a really wonderful. Those are really wonderful limitations and leaning into them has worked for us.

EA: Would you have considered yourself, before this, a very technically savvy person so that this sort of came naturally, or did you have to seek out the right technical collaborators?

JWG: I do not consider myself a technically savvy person. I did my Masters at Carnegie Mellon in directing, and that sort of accidentally coincided with Marianne Weems' time running that program, from Builders Association. So we ended up doing a lot of work that was about integrating technology, and that certainly informed my processes moving forward, but I hadn't really engaged with it very much until now. So I had some of the tools at my disposal. But ultimately, no. I never would have considered myself as someone who was interested in engaging with theatre as a digital art form. And it's been a steep learning curve.

EA: When you go back to a theater someday to make in-person work, do you feel this work will have changed you as either performer, director or maker?

JWG: I do think it has. And I actually don't know if I'll be able to move forward without this material. I think I'd be excited to bring the work I'm doing into a live space. But it's hard for me to imagine just going back to what I had considered traditional theater, and already in conversations I'm having in terms of productions moving forward. I mean, especially this year, the notion of remote work is clearly on people's minds and obviously what I'm being brought in to help facilitate, so I think I might be stuck with it.

EA: if you are asked someday to do something different than this work, do you feel like it will have influenced you in some way?

JWG: Absolutely. I mean, what is sort of ironic about the entire process is, in putting the work online and really constricting the movement of the space, I've actually been able to indulge in the type of work I've always wanted to do and haven't really been able to. Particularly, sort of the extremity of physical performance is something I've never been able to really achieve on stage because it's so expensive. And it’s so difficult to, you know, make load-bearing walls that I'm able to suspend from. So this has actually been extremely opportune in terms of really getting the push to new places.

The thing that I've learned and feel most strongly about in terms of this work is the sense that building theater in New York has been broken for a long time, particularly as an independent artist. You spend more time fundraising and conceiving of grant language than you do in rehearsal, and it's very easy to lose sight of the work. And it's very easy to lose sight of the spirit of experimentation, and what's been really rewarding about the closet is being able to wake up and have a venue, have a space, have an actual practice that I'm able to engage in on a daily basis and feel suddenly that I'm able to plumb the depths of a venue in a way I've never been able to before, because you're always just, you know, in and out for tech week and then you move on to the next black box or the next proscenium. It’s really hard to engage with a space with an architecture in a way that allows you to explore all the possibilities.

EA: Americans have built our theater venues larger than most other countries. And so we have two problems: we have to fill that venue with a play that can assume that size, and we have to make work for an audience large enough to pay the bills and keep the electricity on. But you are experimenting in a really small space and still having a really large audience and having a great article in The New York Times.

JWG: I've always been interested in theater in the most intimate of, not just spaces, but an intimacy of performance. So I think the wonderful fallout of this kind of work, of course, is accessibility. It's really exciting having audiences that are across the country. And finally, for once, people are able to see the work I'm doing, so it's blowing up the notion of community.

EA: You get asked this question a lot - Topside, which is as an astounding piece of work, how did you do it, if you're willing to divulge your secrets?

JWG: Oh, sure. I'm working on a piece with a magician, but I don't consider myself a magician. So I'm really excited to share the how I did it with people.Topside is, you know, of course, a bit of digital slight-of-hand. And I did release a video “Topside bts,” behind the scenes, and it'll show you all of the different composites that we're using. I was interested with Topside, which is, of course, about to two men trapped in a bunker together, playing with camera orientation, sort of using an alternate orientation that is not gravitationally possible as my baseline, and using that, and letting that be fixed and seeing if I could make that work. And then of course there was the conundrum of how to have the second performer. Our original goal. which has yet to be achieved, though I know it is possible, though maybe not with my RAM on my computer right now, was to record myself live doing both performances and loop one. So it would have been basically, I would have recorded the show twice in a row, loop to the second character and then interacted with myself, digitally. That was hard to achieve. So we ended up just doing a pre-recording of the masked character. But otherwise, it's just a sort of classic cinema The Parent Trap, superimposed one shot on top of the other. And playing the games with gravity is always one of my favorite things to do in the closet. And so it's just a matter of drilling certain objects into walls and floors in the right places and hoping they can hold you.

EA: So you must be constantly repairing your venue as well?

JWG: Repairing it. Painting it all the time.

EA: Have you tried any different colors besides white?

JWG: Not yet, funny enough. It's something I look forward to and something we talked about with the Molière, but so far my designers have been always excited about the white box, and I look forward to the moment when we do.

EA: The white box is beautiful, and I can only imagine the day where you change the color, the whole audience is going to say, “They renovated the venue,” It’s going to be such a big change.

JWG: I hope one day to be able to paint live and use that as a performance element as well - actually indulging in mess in a way that that we haven't yet, because, of course, white boxes are perfect spaces for that.

EA: In some of the content of your shows you're exploring ideas of entrapment, in other pieces, sickness. As you choose content, are you working to speak to the political or social-political moment, or does the content come out of the venue that you're using?

JWG: Both, I think. I like to say that all the work we're doing is quarantine-adjacent. So I try not to hit the nail on the head, but I try to hit my thumb. So that's why I think there's a resonance, clearly, anytime I'm coming up with the idea for a project or engaging with material to adapt. It is informed by the current moment, and I try not to avoid that. That being said, there was one play that was going to be my first project. It’s a1920s Czech play by Karel Capek called The White Plague, and we workshopped it, we did readings, we were going to do this play. And then at a certain point, we realized it was just way too on the nose, and doing a piece about a pandemic in which the elder population is being wiped out seemed completely too obvious.

EA: This is a silly question. I’ve been thinking about venue, and one of the limitations of making such adventurous theatre, especially in New York City, is how regulated venues can be, and how hard it is to do the impossible, Do you have a landlord who knows what you're doing?

JWG: I’m very lucky that I live in a co-op. I own my apartment. So no, I don't have a landlord, who knows what I'm doing. I don't know if my neighbors know what I'm doing, either. I think that my closet is directly below the TV of my upstairs neighbor, because sometimes when I'm performing I hear stuff upstairs. So I like to think that the noise is just balancing each other out.

EA: Have you become aware of people who are inspired by your work and trying something similar or copying it?

JWG: Some people have reached out and asked if they can copy. And I said, “Sure.” And also my work is clearly informed by other artists. There’s been some wonderful dancers who have done work in confined space. A lot of the clown work with the gas mask has been informed by Bill Irwin, and an old archive of his where he would lock himself in a TV and kind of flop around playing with that orientation. So, you know, I see myself clearly as a descendant of certain artists and I'm totally fine with other artists playing in this playground. It's a great place to be.

EA: Is there something that you've got swimming in your head that you just think, “I don't know how to do it yet, but I've got to figure it out”?

JWG: Um, yes. I mean, the biggest issue is audio right now. And that’s something that's often overlooked as we're doing a lot of this work. But trying to be able to actually sync performances, just trying to sync my voice with myself is tricky enough, but also hoping to be able to bring in other performers, other musicians, being able to sync that is very difficult. So that's something I'm working on a lot.

I haven't reached the limits yet of what is next. I know that I have so many ideas for how to utilize the space once I can safely bring another performer into it, and that is the that's that I keep dreaming about. I also know I would love to do a musical in the closet somehow. And that's something that has sort of alluded us in a bunch of different ways, both technically, as well as finding the right content for the space. The question of why burst out into song seems somehow even more pressing and relevant once it's put into this container, and so I haven't solved for that yet either.

Expenses is a big part of this and I think in some ways, what's really wonderful about making work and just putting it on YouTube is that we're moving past the institutional gatekeepers, and work can just be experimental and out there. But there are new gatekeepers in place. And I do think the technology is that gatekeeper. And I think the expense involved in terms of acquiring the equipment - it does take its toll. And I do think that is a limit in terms of who's able to do this kind of work, unfortunately.

EA: I’m thinking about your new found theatre practice. You must be feel feeling like you're getting stronger, and yes, probably physically stronger, but also stronger in a kind of creativity. Do you feel things are bubbling in a way that they never have for you?

JWG: Absolutely. I think you're catching me at a moment where I've also kind of needed to take a bit of a rest. The rest that I think everyone else insisted on taking earlier, which is good and positive. But that being said, yeah, it's really, it's so enriching to be able to work, and work individually, by myself, just improvise every day, but also work collaboratively. It has been an extremely positive, very unusual experience for me and some theater artists. I think you're right. I think whether you're in the visual arts, whether you're a dancer, there’s a much more standard sense of practice. And also I've talked to European-based theatre artists who feel a greater sense of practice than here in the States. We just have never quite conceived of or been able to wrap our heads around it. So yes, clearly being able to work and being able to work on multiple projects daily makes a huge difference.

I read once about when Meyerhold was rather young and did the break from Moscow Arts and traveled to some very small town. And I believe within a year, within one season, he directed supposedly like 200 different productions. And that always stuck out in my head as being like the trial we all need as artists, to be able to do something so absurd. To work in such a frantic and expansive capacity is exactly what I've always fantasized of what graduate school should be, but of course never can be.

EA: So during the performance, you are not receiving any kind of audience feedback at all?

JWG: No, no, not yet. That is something I dream of. Or at least, I don't know if I could do this, I would love to code a way for audience to actually use - this is a terrible idea but I think it'd be hilarious - to actually code it so that when an audience clicks “like” or sends an emoji, it could actually connect and trigger canned laughter or applause. So I think that's a really stupid idea that should be investigated in an appropriately stupid context. But that would be a fun way to start playing with how the audience could reciprocate and inform the work But as of yet, no, I am totally alone in there. I get no feedback. I don't know when something's going wrong. And it's very frightening and is why, in a certain way, I rely on these tricks and the more technical work because that's what allows me to just sort of manage getting from point A to point Z in the performance

EA: Are you thinking about your audience or do you concentrate only on your own performance?

JWG: Really, it's just about precision at a certain point. And again, there's so little rehearsal, ultimately, with a lot of these projects, that it's just a high-wire act. I’m up there; I'm just trying to get from one moment to the next and do it as seamlessly as possible.

EA: When this is done, when the pandemic is someday done, will you keep your venue going?

JWG: I think I'll keep the work going. My goal right now is actually, in the hopes that this pandemic actually has an impact on things like New York real estate, my goal would actually be to get a studio and take the closet out of my closet.

Katharine Matthias: You use a lot of film language to describe some of the work that you're doing in the closet. I was wondering how your relationship to that language has influenced how you've thought about theatre.

JWG: I've always been a sort of great lover of film. And in fact, I've always thought that film is an influence on my theatrical work. Prior to all of this, I always thought of my work in terms of jump cuts and perspective, and those sort of cinematic shifts were always involved in my more physical theatre work of pre-Covid. So it wasn't that much of a jump when, finally, I was in this situation. And I guess the main difference, of course, being that the audience now has become a fixed camera perspective. And that's the most exciting thing about it, in terms of playing with a lot of the camera tricks in ways that you really couldn't on stage because there's so many focal points, but here we have one point, and it allows us allows us to accomplish a whole lot more.

EA: One of the things that makes the white box so beautiful is how you visually pop out of it. Are you using tricks like spike marks and pencil marks and eye line marks?

JWG: Only to the extent that it's necessary, if I have to hit a very specific mark. Usually when I'm playing with, like in Topside, those close ups of my eyes, and I have to actually hit a mark in a certain way. I will say, my biggest secret, not much of a secret, is that I mostly feed all of my lines to myself, so I don't have to memorize anything. So that is again, just something I don't have to worry about. And I've done a lot of in-ear performance prior to the pandemic. So it's sort of a working tool I've always been able to rely on.

EA: This has been so wonderful chatting with you. You're thinking about theatre, liveness, venue, producing, and performing in such innovative ways. Obviously, that spirit shows in the wonderful work.

TiQ Hypochondriac 1 - Joshua William Gelb

More information about Theater in Quarantine, along with videos of performances, can be found here.