THE MAILBOX
at
4th Street & Prospect Park West
Brooklyn, New York
October 7 – November 2, 2020
Let’s not mourn our mailboxes
Maligned
As vessels of civic futility.
But make renewed use of them.
To sit together (at a distance)
And console one another. And those we love.
Posting letters from the edge.
THE CONSOLE is a site-specific performance developed for the month leading up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which worked to reanimate a much-maligned piece of public infrastructure – the post – and to induce unexpected modes of contingent connection. For the month leading up to the election, I erected a consolation booth at a mailbox adjacent to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. With paper, envelopes, stamps, hand sanitizer, and a 1940s typewriter, I invited passersby to sit with me (at a distance), to talk about (and often dance through) the grief and loss they were experiencing, and to craft and then mail an improvisatory and consolatory letter-performance to someone they thought could use a boost. The piece was profiled in The New York Times and subsequently by a broad array of local and international outlets including Barbara Fuchs’ Theatre of Lockdown (Bloomsbury Methuen, 2021) and The Kelly Clarkson Show on daytime TV.
Press
Marathon Monday
On Monday, November 2, the day before the election, we sat at the mailbox all day, and were joined by some surprise sonic guests.