Letter from an Artist: The Dream Life of Bricks

In fall 2001, I got a phone call from the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts (MASS MoCA) asking if I’d be interested in creating a site-specific performance piece for this vast industrial complex-turned-museum. This is a site so evocative and rich in its historical importance to the surrounding area, I leapt at the chance. For nine months, I visited the town of North Adams where MASS MoCA is located to conduct workshops with various sectors of the community, do research and simply listen to the buildings.

The site, known as the Marshall Street Industrial Complex, is a series of old brick mill buildings and adjoining courtyards, originally built in the late 1800s by Arnold Print Works, an international clothing manufacturer. Before MASS MoCA took over the site, it had been home for some 40 years to Sprague Electronics, a manufacturer of high-quality electronic components that was the major employer in the area. When Sprague closed its door in 1985, an early victim of globalization, thousands were left unemployed. Many pinned their hopes for a resurrected local economy on MASS MoCA and its ability to draw tourists and spin-off businesses to the area.

What emerged from the nine-month process was not a direct telling of what happened at the Marshall Street Industrial complex from the Civil War era to the present. It was a metaphoric reflection on how events at this site seeped into both the workaday and private lives of the people of North Adams. It was conceived as a journey from the past to the present, a slow awakening of a land of sleepers from a gritty industrial past to an uncertain present on the extreme edges of aesthetic experimentation. The project, entitled "The Dream Life of Bricks," was completed during a three-week residency at MASS MoCA in June 2002 and performed for three nights.

The cast included the actors and dancers from my company, Dance/Theatre/Etcetera; composer Philip Hamilton and his musicians; a chorus of 20 singers comprising local residents, dancers from Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival and the Williams College Dance Department; young actors from the local high school’s Drama Team; and very young playwrights from the Greylock Theatre Project and other community members. The work included installations, an eight-scene minimalist play, several dance sections as well as parts developed specifically for different groups of participating community members based on their stories.

The "Sprague Ladies," as we affectionately called them, was one such group. There were eight of them: Evelyn, Rose Marie, Judy, Midge, Wendy, You Lin, Arlene and Joan, ranging in age from 50 to 83. Many of them had worked at Sprague and were now volunteering as ushers at MASS MoCA events. Every project I undertake has a way of finding its own heart, its central theme. In "Dream Life," the experiences of these women became my guide into both the past and present of this community in transition. The stories they shared were about their families, their days as Sprague employees, joining a union, strikes, unemployment, tenacity and deep roots.

The performance took place in areas of MASS MoCA’s massive site, 26 buildings on 12 acres that are as yet unopen to the public. During our rehearsals in Building 6, I walked with the Sprague Ladies through dank, dark hallways into the enormous space we had chosen as our indoor site. This 40,000 sq.-ft. floor was empty now, save for the forest of pillars that support it. It had once been teeming with women seated at tables assembling intricate electronic components. Their hands built products that steered submarines, were used in space exploration, and even triggered nuclear weapons. Rose Marie had worked in this building for 40 years. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her to hear live music replace the whine of machinery, see dancers rehearsing in the clothes she had worn to work every day and theatrical lights replacing the overhead fluorescents.

The Sprague Ladies performed one of the final sections of the piece, "The Dormitory of Dreams." Our set designer, Ed King, built eight brick beds, each with its own glowing white satin pillow. The women rose and reclined on these beds as they described the work and home worlds they traversed in their younger years. They also spoke lines about the community’s reactions to the closing of Sprague and the advent of MASS MoCA. Evelyn Galese, an early and ardent advocate for the museum, said, "Would you rather see a prison here?" She was referring to an early plan to create a penitentiary on the site.

My favorite line was Rose Marie’s. When I asked her if she could describe a moment in her life when she was supremely happy, she told of attending the opening gala for MASS MoCA. She said, "I felt like Cinderella." This line captured a whole realm of issues. MASS MoCA redefined the community’s relationship to this site. For one night, Rose Marie felt transformed. She traded in her work clothes and position as a powerless employee in a paternalistic corporation for a place at the ball as an honored guest.

As I worked on this piece, I struggled to not impose my own judgments about women’s rights, labor relations and entitlements on the choices made by the residents of North Adams. This is the most interesting part of this kind of collaborative community-based work, the relationship between the "outside artists" and community members. As is true in most of our projects, there is the actual choreography of the work, and then there is what I call the essential, invisible dance. This is the dance of unlikely encounters that takes place as artists and community members work together, become friends, develop relationships, compare life stories. It is this dialogue that informs the piece. And in fact, it is in a very real sense what MASS MoCA stands for — a dialogue between artists and community members that brought into being a unique institution, a merging of the past and present, a cultural factory for the 21st century.

MASS MoCA is an improbable savior. The verdict is still out on whether this institution will provide the needed boost to the town’s economy. It has, in a very tangible way, injected an air of hopefulness and optimism into what was a very depressed area. "Dream Life" was the very first performing-arts commission this institution has undertaken. It is significant that they chose to develop a community-based project. As I saw it, the project’s purpose was to provide an art-based dialogue for the community to voice their opinions about the role this institution would play in their future and reflect on how this site had affected their past. It also gave participating community members a sense of ownership. It was their show, not something MASS MoCA brought in to boost ticket sales. Whether this was a temporary show of collaborative spirit, another Cinderella’s ball, remains to be seen. I know that this experience has changed my life.

I often think of the Sprague Ladies and the skills they developed to cope with "changing times and reversals of fortune," as one cast member put it.

The story enacted at the Marshall Street complex has been repeated throughout America as globalization has redefined relationships between corporations and the communities they do business in. Sprague was once a close-knit family operation. Employees were genuinely moved that the CEO knew their names. Nowadays, if CEOs are even aware of where their plants are, never mind the names and individual lives of their employees, it is an exceptional circumstance.

As demonstrated by the 2002 election results, many Americans have opted out of the dialogue of democracy. There seems to be an overwhelming sense of fatalism or apathy, I’m not sure which, but a definite sense that an individual voice is of no consequence. Theater is active, it is collaborative; it creates a sense of community and demands participation. I am most hopeful when engaged in projects such as "Dream Life." The skills of analytical thinking, reflection, engagement, risk taking are the meat and potatoes of the artistic process. These skills are valuable, essential to reinvigorating public participation in both local and national public-policy making in America. I’d like to think that this country will soon go through its own reawakening and that artists will play a significant role in this process.

Martha Bowers is the artistic director of Dance/Theatre/Etcetera, based in New York. She creates large-scale, site-specific performance events that bring artists and community members together in arts-based dialogue.

Original CAN/API publication: December 2002