Top Secret

Invited artist project for the Real Dream Cabaret

Fall 2004, Buffalo, NY

The Real Dream Cabaret is a troupe of performers and other

insurrectionists who routinely transform the backroom of a

bookshop into a hotspot for experimental entertainment in

Buffalo, NY. They invited me to develop a piece for a show

called "The Underworld." I devised a game that I hoped would

tease out secret desires, fears, fantasies, and other concealed

information from the Cabaret attendees.

I asked people to write a secret down on a little piece of paper

I had provided. They gave these to me, and I mixed them up

in a box - it was all anonymous. When it was my turn to perform

in the Cabaret, I distributed the secrets out to the audience

and asked them to read them aloud as though it was his/her

own. I then improvised comments from the stage in response

to the uproarious confessions made by the audience.