#** one day i will recap the 2010s death that led to the '13-16 rebirthing of so many orgs. not today

[pirepoumon]

still thinking about the venue choice local queer (as in, content about queer people, relationships, transition, etc. regardless of who created it) performances essay i want to write. but i don't know what my point is and i can't write without one.

consistently the warehouse stagings of weirder shows by local arts juggernauts, no matter the theme, are specifically leveraging the sense of intimacy that only a couple rows deep of in-the-round gym chair seating can provide. KYS is the first, imo, of the modern local renaissance and they did it with horror - but even their straight titus andronicus was in Play's (gay bar) warehouse, back when they didn't have their own. the woman in black was a stunning (mostly) two man show, also not queer*.

contrasting as one from ky opera and the woman in black is a large part of what got me thinking about this anyway - the former is a gorgeous two singer opera which was staged in the opera's warehouse, the bar in their library, the organization's history on the walls in the same non-advertising, scrapbook way that is a casual private kind of public, like family photos in a living room. in the post-performance talk the director (who is, in fact, heading ATL but took on his first opera direction this show) talked about the choice to stage it here not only as the intimacy of the physical facts of the space - its size, the stage and seating sharing a floor without demarcation or elevation change - but the intimacy of being in the opera's home, home office and home rehearsal space.

the opera's warehouse is located on magazine street - eighth and magazine, where you can see the great asphalt canyon of the ninth street divide from their parking lot. no preserved facades, no whiskey row art installations, no tourism advertising, just the living legacy of carving the black west end from the city center via the bulldozing and highway-building policies of our 20th century city government. it feels othered, because it is other-than, but i do think that sense of home the opera spoke to is palpable, even if i refrain from pretending i can judge the "authenticity" of a "feeling" of an organization.

ky shakes' hometurf shows haven't been queer, as discussed above, but their shakespeare in dance ballet collaboration shocked me to tears with the public dramatization of both heterosexual and homosexual desire on stage, for free, in the park, all those years ago. and so still it hits that when i walk to their shelby street warehouse for their seasonal halloween show, their private home i have come to visit only blocks away from their public one, i do believe it when Matt Wallace tells me this is YOUR kentucky shakespeare.

it is beyond the scope of this essay i'm not writing to address the similarly your louisville orchestra tagline-obsessed, uh, LO, but that line lands solely in the context of teddy abrams' revival of the making music program in local elementary schools, in its tour of the entire state from east to west that parallels the now-standard miniature parks (and library) tour of kentucky shakes.

there are other considerations, like price (it's easier to swallow KY shakes being ours when its main season is fully free; the opera, reaching out beautifully, is still exceptionally expensive without student tix). the geographical designation in these organization's names are practical to distinguish from other ones elsewhere, sure, but it is essential to their revival**. there are two ways for something to belong to a group whose sole commonality is geographical residence: to invite people in, or to go to their community wherever they are; arts organizations who most embody their own vision of belonging to/serving their neighbors will and must do both.

well i guess this has to be part one because this is basically the perfect setup for re-explaining why the highview mob boss sligo newcastle from the extremely mediocre play the kiss me curse at highview arts center is essentially the pinnacle of local theater ethos. but i am out of time