Acting Stranger will hopefully screen in some form tomorrow at the Conflux Festival Headquarters in the Village.  I’ll plan on being there around 1:00PM and staying until around 3:00PM.  I’ll bring a couple pairs of headphones and some speakers, and most likely a slew of DVDs to hand out.

I’ve been able to shoot eleven new scenes this week, five of them just today.  I’m becoming more at ease the more I have these stranger experiences with the participants.  I have been too often worrying about lines, and making the other person comfortable, and hoping that they are in the frame of the shot.  It can be hard to let yourself go and just be present in the moment which is ideally what the project is all about.  Being there.  Letting yourself invest totally in someone who you have never seen nor spoken a word to.  I’m realizing a lot about the project as I go forward.  Conflux has turned out to be a good play ground for Acting Stranger.

All the recently uploaded scenes can be found on the new video page of acting stranger here.

Acting Stranger, the project that involves complete strangers acting out short and intense scenes with me, will be featured in the upcoming Conflux festival, which will take place all around NYC from September 11-14 (next weekend!).  You can signup directly at actingstranger.com or you can head down to festival HQ at the Center for Architecture in the Village (536 LaGuardia Place), where you can also check out these other psychogeographical projects from some of my friends:

• 802.11 Apparel – Wifi Jacket . Jenny Chowdhury
• Botanicalls: A Walking Tour of Manhattan Led by the Plants of New York . kati
• Self-Sustainable Chair . JooYoun
• Wildernets . Doris Cacoilo, Mouna Andraos & Sonali Sridhar

Even if you can’t participate in Acting Stranger because you’re familiar with me, tell your friends to start acting stranger.

I’ll be posting updates from the festival as they happen.

Acting Stranger is an experiment in performance.
I write short scripts.
I invite people who I don’t know to read those scripts and choose a specific scene and character they would like to perform.
We set up a date, location, and time.
There is no introduction.
There is no direction.
There is only one take.
There are no goodbyes.
The only interaction is the interaction that takes place within the scene.

I am rolling this site out slowly.
Any comments would be appreciated.

Tell your friends! Because they’re not my friends! They’re perfect strangers!