please come alone
please come alone is a contemporary performance piece exploring what it means to be alone and to come together. The series of solos investigates what happens at the moment when an individual creator opens themself up to an audience. Each performer works with director Moscelyne ParkeHarrison and dramaturg Hannah Gellman to develop a score and playlist for a thirty-minute solo performance that explores their aesthetic and narrative values. Performers and directors co-create please come alone by asking questions, honing improvisation, and developing the structure together. The soloists rehearse apart from each other, thus experiencing each other's work for the first time when they witness each other’s solos.
In June 2021 Gellman and ParkeHarrison led a workshop performance of please come alone: a canto at the raw retail space of Powerhouse Square in Great Barrington, MA. The solos were performed by Housatonic-based dance collective BODYSONNET. ParkeHarrison, Sean Lammer, Mio Ishikawa, Madison Vomastek and Sayer Mansfield each performed solos on four consecutive nights, culminating in a fifth night in which a fifth performer joined and the entire ensemble performed the piece together for the first and only time.
Supported by the Martha Boschen Fund of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Powerhouse Square/Benchmark Development, Départ Wine, and Berkshire Pulse.
This fall ParkeHarrison and Gellman held a research lab with graduate actors and dramaturgs at Yale University. They will continue exploring means to adapt the score for a variety of mediums for please come alone in preparation for a live performance in NYC in summer 2022.
This summer (2022) please come alone will enter its full cross-disciplinary form with a production team and ten actors, dancers and musicians. The ticketed performance will take place over the course of a week. Each night two of the ten performers will share their interpretation of the same score back-to-back from 8-9pm.