The binders are still open, but the rehearsal room has given way to a set. Atlantic Theater Company has released the first production photographs of I Became We, Mona Pirnot's new play for a sixteen-voice choir, now in performance at the Linda Gross Theater.
Ahron R. Foster, who also photographed the company in rehearsal for the first look Atlantic released earlier this month, shot the new set in the theater. The singers stand in tiered rows in dark clothes, scores in hand, against a curving wall of angled panels washed in amber, with a grand piano at the side of the stage. In several frames the composer, Jack D. Coen, faces them as conductor.
Pirnot calls the piece auto-fictional, and the staging turns that private voice into a collective one. Its text is a first-person monologue, a woman in her mid-thirties turning over one of the biggest decisions of her life, but no single performer speaks it. The choir sings it instead, in everyday language set to the shapes of classical choral writing, with lyrics credited jointly to Pirnot and Coen. Sarah Benson directs.
For Atlantic it is a return engagement with two Obie winners: Pirnot, who wrote I'm Assuming You Know David Greenspan, and Benson, whose credits there include The Welkin. Coen, a Relentless Award winner, wrote Jo Jenkins Before the Galactic High Court of Consciousness. The design team is Mimi Lien (sets), Louisa Thompson and Gylanni Carrington (costumes), Tuce Yasak (lighting) and Palmer Hefferan (sound).
Performances began on October 16, and the limited run ends on November 15. The evening lasts 70 minutes with no intermission. Tickets for I Became We are on sale now.
