Create a Play on the Bus
The whole Art Shanty Project experience is itself a performance, but within the Art Shanty community there is a play where the audience dictates the order and content of the performance. The audience can also perform each scene themselves or hand them off to our Actors On Call - Mike Hentges and David Schlosser. Scripts were written for the bus by Charles Campbell (Skewed Visions), Emily Gastineau and Billy Mullaney (the duo collectively known as Fire Drill), and Matthew A. Everett.
The Vehicle of Expression is an Art Shanty that’s actually a bus, devoted to the art of the written word - the brainchild of Valerie Borey. Every weekend, starting Sunday, February 5th, there are two performances a day for Create A Play On The Bus (3pm and 3:30pm), each Saturday and Sunday for the rest of the month. Earlier in the day on the Vehicle of Expression there are other writing experiences - poetry, prose, readings of all kinds - other artists involved in running the shanty are Christine Jaspers, Jaymee Kjelland, and Elizabeth Sowden. We close the day with a play.
The audience are the sixteen passengers on the bus. In front of each passenger is a scene in a colorful numbered envelope. The bus driver/master of ceremonies asks a passenger to pick a number. The two passengers with that numbered envelope sitting in front of them pull out their scene. They can choose to read it themselves or hand it off to the actors on call. Once the scene is done, another passenger is asked to pick a number, and another scene is read. Once this happens five or six times, the performance is complete. The passengers disembark, new scenes are placed in the envelopes, new passengers arrive, and the play creation begins anew.
Like the community of 20 Art Shanties out on the frozen White Bear Lake, all performances of Create A Play On The Bus are free and open to the public. The Art Shanties are open 10am to 4pm every Saturday and Sunday in the month of February. Come look around, then finish off your stay with a little play.
The Vehicle of Expression is an Art Shanty that’s actually a bus, devoted to the art of the written word - the brainchild of Valerie Borey. Every weekend, starting Sunday, February 5th, there are two performances a day for Create A Play On The Bus (3pm and 3:30pm), each Saturday and Sunday for the rest of the month. Earlier in the day on the Vehicle of Expression there are other writing experiences - poetry, prose, readings of all kinds - other artists involved in running the shanty are Christine Jaspers, Jaymee Kjelland, and Elizabeth Sowden. We close the day with a play.
The audience are the sixteen passengers on the bus. In front of each passenger is a scene in a colorful numbered envelope. The bus driver/master of ceremonies asks a passenger to pick a number. The two passengers with that numbered envelope sitting in front of them pull out their scene. They can choose to read it themselves or hand it off to the actors on call. Once the scene is done, another passenger is asked to pick a number, and another scene is read. Once this happens five or six times, the performance is complete. The passengers disembark, new scenes are placed in the envelopes, new passengers arrive, and the play creation begins anew.
Like the community of 20 Art Shanties out on the frozen White Bear Lake, all performances of Create A Play On The Bus are free and open to the public. The Art Shanties are open 10am to 4pm every Saturday and Sunday in the month of February. Come look around, then finish off your stay with a little play.