At the end of July, Applied Mechanics set out to the New Jersey shore, to spend a day and two nights at the Rubin family beach house and Talk Things Out. This is our Annual Jamboree. It involves a bottle of Mount Gay rum and bathing suits and midnight runs on the beach and inventing a gang name for ourselves called the Margate Moonbeams. But mostly, it involves assessing our practices and making a plan for How To Proceed in the Next Year. And this one was particularly important because of big changes on the wind.
One of us is going to become a mom in November.
One of us is taking a post-doctoral fellowship at University of Chicago.
One of us is transitioning from backstage to center stage.
One of us has left a full-time job to make more art.
All of us miss being in process, since our last show, We Are Bandits, came down a year ago. We miss each other. We miss being in the fight together. We miss playing and want to step up our game.
One thing is clear: we are committed to our love for each other. We’re a family. We are going to start making A LOT more things together before 2015 is out. In the midst of all these life transitions, we’re fastening our seat belts and going for the gold.
WHAT THE REST OF 2015 HOLDS FOR APPLIED MECHANICS
SEPTEMBER: A subversive guerilla Fringe piece in 2015
(look out for black market cigarette girls)
OCTOBER: Immersive gala for Women’s Way at the Camden Aquarium
(famous female scientists play punk rock, OMG Marie Curie)
NOVEMBER: An Incubator residency at University of the Arts about Uprisings Through History
(students explore moments of resistance and bring them to life)
AND IN THE NEW YEAR: The launch of our new Education Initiative, as well as research for our most ambitious project yet, CHRONOTOPE, comprised of multiple productions (chapters) over the next few years. A show about journalists, stenographers, historians, folklorists, translators, photographers, poets, and all of the people who shape the story of a culture, every day.
The last morning, we went to the beach together and each of us made a little environment in the sand. Children prowled at the fringes in packs, wondering what this group of adults in bikinis could be up to and when they would be allowed to destroy whatever we were doing. We showed one another our 6 little distinct worlds — some participatory (arrange these cigarette butts where you like!) some tactile (walk on this!) some mysterious (put your foot in this hole!) some secret (put your face in this grotto of shells!) — until finally, Bayla Rubin lead us to some sand dunes where she’d left a little family of fishing bobs together in the dune grass, a hidden piece of art. The group of us contemplated Bayla’s offering, together, a family looking at a family.