Scenic designer Christine Jones, a Tony nominee for American Idiot, discusses the development of the project from album to Broadway musical, including when she came into the creative process and how her ideas influenced the piece. She also talks about her youth in Canada, including her original plans to be a professional dancer, her flirtation with acting and her shift into the visual medium of scenic design; why she moved to the United States to train; how she got her first design jobs, at Hartford Stage and The Public Theatre; her work on the musical Spring Awakening, including the genesis of the onstage seating and how the show managed its shift from the Atlantic Theatre Company to its Broadway berth; whether she thinks the Great White Way is hospitable to female set designers; and how she developed "Theatre for One," her unique hybrid of theatrical performance and peep show booth that recently finished a high-profile residency in Times Square.

Click the play button to listen to interview excerpts about Theatre for One.

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Click here to hear the original interview on American Theatre Wing's Downstage Center, which aired June 2, 2010 (running time 1:02:40)

T41 was at Clubbed Thumb, at the Ohio Theater, 66 Wooster Street, NYC, June 14 through the 27th, 2010. www.clubbedthumb.org

Theater for One was on Governors Island, June 11 through 13, 2010 as part of FIGMENT, a free, annual celebration of participatory art and culture where everything is possible. For one weekend each summer, it transforms Governors Island into a large-scale collaborative artwork… and then it's gone.

Invited by the Times Square Alliance for Public Art, Theatre for One was in residence in Duffy Square from May 14 through May 31, 2010, presenting magic, poetry, dance, puppetry and theatre pieces created specifically for this venue.

Reviews: A Theater in Times Square With Seating for Just One, The New York Times
"One"-of-a-Kind Theater, New York Post

In preparation for Theatre for One's residency in Times Square (May 2010), during which the theatre will operate for 10 days and present approximately 300 performances, The Entertainment Technology and Design Department of New York City Tech hosted a discussion and open viewing at the Voorhees Theatre in Brooklyn.
The event was written up by Ellen Lampert-Greaux here:
http://www.livedesignonline.com/news/theatre_for_one_092212/

Theatre for One has been invited by the Times Square Alliance for Public art to be installed in the heart of Times Square during a 10 day residency in May 2010. More details to come.

T41- 2 currently exists in storage, waiting for its next incarnation, which is in development with the support of True Love Productions. My hope is that someday there will be multiple booths in different shapes and sizes, (T41 1 - 20), that are created specifically for the needs of each new performance. I envision Theatre for One having a rotating body of work that includes music, dance, poetry and multimedia productions. Any kind of event created for one, to be shared by two, has a home in Theatre for One.

THE HEARING BOOTHS is a Theatre for One related project in development with Jane Cox, designed to heighten individual connections to the act of listening, as well as to the act of playing, music.

In an open space music is playing. Within this space are a number of Hearing Booths equal to the number of Playing Musicians. One booth, constructed in clear plexi, contains the Conductor. The other booths are opaque. Each contains a musician along with their instrument. The shape of the booth reflects its contents.

In the open space the audience can hear the entire musical work. Lights above the doors to the booths indicate vacancies. Listeners can move in and out of the booths at will. Upon entering, one is brought into a One on One relationship with the musician, their instrument, and the notes the musician is playing in the moment. If the musician's part in that moment is silence, the player and hearer share the silence.

By moving in and out of the booths, the music can be experienced in its wholeness and in its parts. There is an opportunity for less tuned ears to hear the skeleton of a composition that might be elusive, and there is the chance for all to have a moment during which each of the notes is being played for you and you alone.

One of my favorite phrases comes from StoryCorps*: "listening is an act of love".

In the Hearing Booths, "listening and playing are both acts of love".