laialeah In Conversation with Theresa Buchheister: Box Machine, Real Estate, Taking Care, Jon’s Big Arms, and more
Having a conversation, dare I say “an interview”, with Laia (pronounced LAH-yah and Leah (pronounced LAY-uh) is probably performance art. Impossible to transcribe, but worth trying. I asked them to entertain some questions because, as usual, they are up to some interesting shit. Most recently, they have started hosting shows at Box Machine. What is Box Machine, you ask? Well, the first part of our zoom was a full tour, from entrance to twin closets and back again. It is a room, wrapped in plastic, lined with ephemera, in a home that has cats and is filled with potential, openness and care. And we are about to tell you all about it. For now, if you want to be in the know about upcoming shows, opportunities, rules and documentation, follow @laiaxc and @leah.annia on IG.
Theresa Buchheister:
So first question is … who are you? For our reading audience. Like, who the hell are you? What's up?
Laia Comas:
I'm a transexual
(long pause)
Full stop. As well as somebody who just got a really cute purse for $3 at my childhood church yard sale. Oh my god and also, sometimes I make theater and performance, but it's mostly those first two things. I'm also a drama therapist in training. And I don't like.. a lot of things.
TB:
Great. That's the lens through which we'll experience you for the rest of this interview. So that really works for me. Leah, who the hell are you?
Leah Plante-Wiener:
Hello, I am Leah Plante-Wiener. I am a bisexual and I am by trade a playwright, by heart, many other things. Among them, I would say like, I present to the world as playwright, but honestly, like, experimental theater maker is sort of where my heart is these days. Performer, not actor. Performer. That's a big, I mean, maybe actor someday. But, yeah, playwright, performer, curator of performance. That is something that brings me immense joy - bringing community together and platforming the artists that I care about. (I was talking to Laia a bunch and asked) What am I doing? What's my life? Why am I here? And one of my big whys is so that I can bring people together and introduce people to each other and introduce people to artists that blow their heads wide open and make them go - Actually, maybe I am a performance artist, maybe I am a sound artist. Maybe I do want to do projection work. So I would say - enabler of multidisciplinary discovery is how I'm feeling right now.
I also, you know, I design, I cast. I'm a theater door person. I do all sorts of fun things.
TB:
How did you begin working together?
LC:
We met at The Brick in 2023 as interns. January 2023.
LPW:
We met first officially seeing the Ben Shapiro Project by Ella Davidson and Sarah Finn’s Our Bodies Like Dams. All I remember is like, I said something to Jon Schatzberg and it was incorrect and then Laia corrected me and I went, oh, thank you. And then a week later, we were eating pizza at Brick Aux with you and Harrison?
TB:
Oh yeah! Harrison gets back to the country this month from Australia.
LC:
And then we, at the time, lived super close together and took the train back from the brick.
LPW:
And then we're really like, "Holy shit. We've written all the same plays. Isn't that fun?"
LC:
Yeah. I described this recently to someone as like the game of pong where we are each one of the little boards that the thing bounces off of. Yeah. That is how it feels.
LPW:
That is very much how our process feels, but there's never the feeling that anybody's losing. Sometimes it's just the feeling of, "Oh, we need to start the game again. Cool."
TB:
Your new headshots should just be screenshots of Pong.
LC:
But our head.
TB:
Yeah. That's it. It's just Pong is your headshot. Go on…
LPW:
And then we spent a lot of time sitting at Brick Aux together working on things separately and then sometimes together and tormenting Cameron Stuart.
LC:
And then as of August of that year, 2023, which was Bonefruit at The Tank, we've worked together pretty consistently. Pretty much everything.
India Shea and Sarah-Michele Guei in Bonefruit, The Tank, 2023
LPW:
Pretty much everything. Yeah. I can't think of any long-term project I've worked on in the last two years that you weren't involved in.
LC:
Yeah. I do a lot more like production gig work than you do.
LPW:
Right. Right. Because you're a stage manager and a designer. Theresa, you should have seen Queer Butoh.
LC:
But just to clear for the record, yes, I'm a stage manager and a designer, but my training is as a director, and I'm primarily a director. I'm interested in material and design. But if I don't make that clarification, all of a sudden, I'm going to be known as a stage manager.
LPW:
And then everybody's going to want to hire you.
LC:
Which I'm not opposed to. But if you're going to hire me as your stage manager, you have to know that actually I'm a director.
LPW:
Yes. And that is a very specific recipe that you are cooking with if you hire that.
LC:
That thing.
LPW:
Laia is a really great stage manager, but, you know, that's nobody's business.
TB:
Yeah. Other than everyone reading this interview.
LC:
Other than literally everyone. Yeah. Redact it.
(Brief pause)
Something I really value about our collaboration is also like the different shapes it has taken.
LPW:
Like I was involved in Haircut Play :€. Like A, first of all, because that play is my niece. Like - That's my baby girl. I like to joke that I gave her her first glass of wine, and then Laia was like - “Leah, she's two” - and I was like - "Yeah, what about it?" But I did the graphic design for that play. You know I wasn't dramaturg or in rehearsal all the time.
LC:
Well, and you did publicity. You totally sold the show. It wasn't just the graphic design.
LPW:
Okay. I did the publicity. I did the publicity. I did all the posting. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, redacted.
I don’t do social media for people any more. However, I do design!
And Haircut Play :€ felt natural to me.
LC:
And I recently, while stage managing at The Brick, said to patrons, "No, actually, I'm not box office staff. I can't sell you a drink." So we've both been drawing boundaries more recently.
TB:
This is honestly a good segue into the next question because it’s about that kind of specificity that you develop over time because you sort of have to. You might not think you need to, but then you wander into a situation where you're like, "Actually, yes, I do need to define why I'm doing this”. People are so concerned with finding opportunities to which they can say “yes” and chasing that “yes” that they forget that they're going to have to say “no” a lot as well and understand why.
LPW:
I feel like Laia and I have both, in our careers together and separately, just made it out of the woods of that period where everybody's like, "You have to say ‘yes’ to everything." And you're like, "Yeah, totally. Yes. I need exposure. I need money. I need connections." I feel like we are just at the end of that now, and now we're saying “no”. And it feels good. It feels really good to say no. Yeah. Yeah.
TB:
And you know Peter (Mills Weiss) brought this up with me a while back on one of my visits… the importance of a no is almost more important than the yeses, the way that you say them to other people, the way that you receive them. And if you don't know that, you might not need to be in a position of artistic leadership.
(Pause)
Which brings me to - What is this project? And how did you come up with it? Why are you doing it? You've had one so far…
LPW:
We have one coming up.
TB:
Yeah. We'll get to what's coming. But where did it come from? So, the origin story of Box Machine and what you think it is right now.
LC:
Okay. So I'm going to start because you're the only person I talk less than, Leah.
TB:
Hahaha… That is so true. I will say that everything that that statement implies is so true.
LC:
Okay. So Box Machine, which is this venue project that we're doing, started I would say specifically because during the rehearsal slash devising process for Warm Science (Laia and Leah’s project in the 2024 ?!:New Works at The Brick), we did the majority of those rehearsals in Leah's apartment. And that was a team of 11 people, I think, including performers, stage manager, assistant director.
LPW:
Important context is that I used to live here with a girlfriend. I no longer live here with said girlfriend, but I still live here. And I have very kind and generous parents who are patrons of the arts and of my life. And they said, "Hey, we know this apartment's too big for you. Don't worry about it. Don't get a roommate." And I was in my first year of grad school, and I was like, "Okay, sure." And then before I knew it, I had this room, this strange second room. And the first time it really got used was for Warm Science. So that was when we first started doing things in the space. And that wasn't necessarily public.
LC:
And at the time, we referred to it as the litter box, which then was renamed as Box Machine.
LPW:
Exhibit A and B.
(Leah shows us the litter boxes in Box Machine)
LC:
Yeah. They don't live in there for actual shows. Unless the artist would like for them to.
LPW:
Yes. We don't recommend it.
box machine in the making
LC:
I think the genealogy… when I was in college, myself and some friends ran a dinner performance salon semi-weekly out of my and my friend Ellis's apartment. And that was really where most of my artistic curatorial interests lay during college - like at the intersection of food and performance. I'm grateful that early on I was like, "Oh, yeah, theater is not confined to a stage. This is also a possibility." And I think as soon as I moved to the city and was starting to look for people and spaces to do stuff, I had it in the back of my head, like what are the apartments that will work? Because the problem is real estate.
LPW:
Yeah. There is no real estate. More recently, we just were kind of like, "Yeah, let's fucking do it at this point." I think because okay, so similarly for me in college, I did a lot of casting in college, and I did a lot of curation because I was on the board of the NYU Broke People Festival, and I was their marketing director. But as all college play festival boards work, I was also involved in curation and involved in casting. And it was like I loved the math of it. I loved the people-math of it. I loved that it was like this very strange specific alchemy, both in the curation of a season of plays and in the casting of said plays. I just fell completely, completely in love with that process. And throughout my time at Columbia, where I just got my playwriting MFA, I was also always casting our class readings, which my classmates very generously thanked me for with a bottle of bourbon at the end of our time at Columbia. So this element of thinking hard and thinking about who fits where and what's the chemistry is like a part of my brain that is active, honestly, more often than not. And then in the spring, in March, I want to say it was March, we threw a party for my thesis to raise money. And we raised $1,000, which was incredible. We raised $1,000 over the course of six hours, which was kind of unbelievable.
LC:
Yeah. And what we had done to raise funds for Warm Science is that we had also thrown a party and we used the old Makers Ensemble space. We did the same thing for Haircut Play :€, where we had members of the team perform and do whatever strange in-between performance medium really called to them.
LPW:
And the parties themselves always felt like just a little bit elevated, like, "Ooh, it's all performance." And then like Laia and I would get to MC and whatnot. And we did another one in Jonathan Schatzberg's yard. And the exercise of that just like set my brain on fire. I loved doing it. I loved thinking about who would be right for the space. I was just like delighted and surprised and shocked by everything I saw that night. And I was like, "Laia, we need to do this again. We need to do this again. We need to be putting artists in a space. We know the people. We have the network. We have the pull. People take us seriously. If we ask them to perform at a thing, they'll be like - yeah - they won't be like - Who are you?" And so I don't remember exactly at what moment it was like, "Oh, and is this what the room is for?" But Laia and I had also been discussing doing a show, specifically for the two of us. Which is actually going to happen this summer. It's called Mobile Wash Female Locker Room. And we're doing it, if all goes according to plan, the last week of August for seven days straight, like every night for a week, Sunday to Saturday. And so at some point, we caught the bug of like, "Oh, we can also produce other artists. And actually, it's just a matter of space, and it's actually really easy, and people will want to make it happen, and people will work with you…” And it's just like such a beautiful collaborative effort. And I don't remember when the switch clicked to, "Oh, we can do this, and we can offer other artists that we love, our friends, individual one-night-only slots at Box Machine." And it just like all made sense.
LC:
I would also like to say in terms of vision, the intention is not that it's limited to people who we would describe as our friends. That's the community that you see.
LPW:
But it's our launch pad.
LC:
In terms of collaboration, I sort of am like the tech and design curator, and I'm like, "Okay, how are we going to fit into this space?" It’s fun! And I think in terms of what is Box Machine, like I think it's truthfully a very difficult space, and that's what is exciting and interesting. And as we're starting to think of programming, obviously, there's no need to make a board happy or cover overhead costs or anything like that. At least at this point. So we have the flexibility to sort of figure it out as we go and learn the lessons from each one. We're trying to get people in there to to help us think about this difficult space. And how can you use that difficulty? It is low-tech. Like, Abuela lives below the room.
LPW:
Yeah, she does. We're always like, "Sorry, Abuela. Sorry, Abuela.” It can't be that loud.
LC:
We’re approaching it sort of like Brick Aux. We'll slowly see how loud we can get, but we can't just like out the gate do a noise concert.
LPW:
Exactly. And then it's also like, if people are exclusively using the room that is Box Machine and not the whole apartment…
LC:
You really can't have a comfortable audience of more than 12.
LPW:
You could fit more people than that, uncomfortably. For Wonderful Cringe, we had like, I think, 36 people. And that was kind of crazy. It was insane. It worked for the piece. It was hallucinatory. Like how I explained the night to people is that there were 35 people in my apartment. It was really, really hot. There was a man on TV, and then the man from the TV was inside my apartment. That is how I explained it.
Wonderful Cringe at box machine / photo: Tess Walsh
LC:
And we're glad we did that. And also, probably, we will curate things that require cramming more people into the space in the winter when it's not 96 degrees outside. So I think, in some ways, like all of the things we learned about making work in a space, like The Brick, like the spaces that we make work in..
LPW:
Like The tank, a 56-seater, when there's another set underneath that we have to work with that can't be taken down, is helping. Like the dial is turned up to plus 15. And that's what we're excited about curatorially.
LPW:
And I mean, like Laia and I, both as Laia/Leah and separately, we are both obsessed with form and the challenges of form and the way in which…
LC:
Whatever the hell that means.
LPW:
You know, like the way in which form constricts, but then through that, you find a very strange pocket of, "Oh, this is what the piece is." Like, there are two closets in that room. And there's a world in which that's bothersome. But in our world, we're like, "Okay, so we're staging theater inside of the closets." Awesome.
LC:
This is what the one wall looks like. And so there's these two alcoves with depth. And so for our piece, in particular, like Leah's going to be in one of them and Laia's going to be in the other. And we probably break that form at a certain point, but yeah.
(Pause)
So anyways, that's Box Machine.
Wonderful Cringe at box machine / photo: Tess Walsh
LPW:
Also, the shower was used. Like I told you, Theresa. Multiple people took showers at the show. And I was like, "This is crazy. Where else can that happen?"
TB:
Any space that has a shower is such a gift to an artist. The number of times I've had to figure out with Hannah Kallenbach how to clean them up after a show without a shower…So interestingly, my next question was, what are the details of the space, size, outlets, windows, rafters, chairs, etc.
LPW:
So many outlets.
TB:
Which I've sort of gotten a little bit of from the tour (that preceded this interview). So just contextually, I'll say that we got a tour and you can look at the video that will be underscored by Evanescence. But, for those who don’t want to watch that hahaha… There are two closets next to each other. There's a fire escape. There's ephemera. There's pipe with plastic curtains so far.
LC:
Not weight bearing whatsoever.
TB:
Great. No aerial silks going on.
LPW:
No air conditioning in the room, but we have some bladeless Dyson fans, one of which is 10 years old and really holding on and trying her best. We also have bodies to lift said fans, which I did. Well, Laia did it and then I took it and I brought it further into the room. So I just had this air purifying tower in my arms.
LC:
The fan was honestly bullshit. It didn't do anything.
LPW:
Emotionally, it does something for people.
LC:
Emotionally it does something for you and me because we feel like we're making people feel less hot, but it actually, in fact, does absolutely nothing. I'm putting my “we-re director and playwright in the room together” hat on to shut you up, Leah. In terms of actual tech specs, we can send that to you, and we can pretend that we said it nicely in conversation.
TECH SPECS:
- let's call it 9x12x8 (it's not quite that but that's close enough and we’ll be more specific with folks programmed in the space)
- printer
- random bluetooth speakers
- many edison outlets
- no dimmable lights
box machine (virgin)
TB:
I love it. That's so much of what you were just talking about - what is the form? What's the container? And how does that limit you but also release and expose things that you might not otherwise discover?
LPW:
Right. And what's super cool as well is that our tech abilities and our stock will build with every show we have in the space, depending on what the artists need. So first of all, we only work with creative problem solvers. That is who we're working with in this space. Second of all, you know we will go to materials for the arts with them. We'll go to materials for the arts for them. It's like serving in this role of facilitator, I think. Like How do we make your dreams happen? And if that's not possible, how do we approximate or find something that's just as exciting for you? And as we do that for our different artists, well, then our stock grows, and then we can offer more to the next artists. And then all the pieces sort of come in conversation with themselves because then you're like, "Oh, there's the fake blood from Wonderful Cringe," or like, "Oh, I remember this projector being used in X, Y, Z," or like, "Oh, this desk, which the cat tree was on last time I was in, is now being used in the room." So yeah, it's really kind of delicious and like ooh, a little spicy thing to create this continuum of performance where, in a space like this, where it never really is a blank slate, everything is part of the same world and everything is in conversation. And to me, everything that I have in this apartment, like once again, it's fair game. And the artist can include it as much or as little as they want. I don't know. It feels like an artist jungle gym where it's quite difficult, actually. Like the bars are far apart, and the rope's a little skinny, and you have to climb pretty high. But it's a workout, and it's a workout for us, and it's a workout for the artists.
LC:
And also sorry… Some five-year-old will probably fall and break their arm, and then there's going to be a lawsuit in the local municipality…
LPW:
And then we have to write a statement.
LC:
Yeah. They're going to remove the jungle gym.
LPW:
The liability.
LC:
All of the above. But also a big part of it is that we are interested in work that is ambitious.
LPW:
I mean, the Wonderful Cringe piece was certainly ambitious, and I mean, it was thrilling, and it was scary, and it was like kind of dangerous, but also like a warm embrace at the same time. And it's like, "Oh, God, under no circumstances, should we ever have this many people in this space?" But we did. And it created this really heightened sensual experience. Laia and I are now talking a lot about theater in hot spaces and how can we create theater in hot spaces because it does just put the brain in such a state, especially when experienced together.
LC:
It's also like an inevitability of our world now. It’s getting hot. We’re making the planet hotter. We don't have spaces that have large theaters that are air conditioned that are just available for us to fuck around in. You know? We don't have that. So we do it in our backyards. We do it in the weird spare room in the apartment that your friends’ mom and dad are paying for.
LPW:
Like, you do it in someone's basement where there's definitely mold and maybe lead in the walls. The reality is our world is hostile to us, and we will create art in it in spite of it. And we will grow stronger and we will experience many challenges. And I am really excited about it. I mean, like I have a really difficult relationship with heat. I've been super medicated since I was 14. It's been a decade of just like no heat regulation whatsoever. But since Wonderful Cringe, where we were all collectively completely overheated and sweaty, and then the man from the TV was inside the apartment, and then there was blood everywhere and multiple people had their shirts off… I was like, "Oh, this feels similar to almost like an ancient rite where we all sit in a room together and sweat our balls off, and like our brains all enter this jello state of consciousness together. And that's the sort of thing you can do in an unconventional performance space. Anyways, some upcoming artists are interested in doing durational performance, which they can get away with because it's my apartment. And I'm not going to be the one to be like, "No, you can't be here now."
LC:
Yes, we can get away with it, but also like what the fuck does that mean for you when you go to bed? You know? And I'm interested in that.
LPW:
Right. That is inevitably part of it. I see you and me taking shifts. That's what I imagine happening. Or I also see myself just not sleeping at all. That is absolutely the sort of thing I see putting myself through.
TB:
Get volunteers! You know, probably the longest performance I did was 28 hours, I think. And I was the only one who was awake the whole time. Though I did lay down at about 8:00 a.m. on the first day. I should have gotten volunteers. Cautionary tale! You know, there's a great history of not only shows in unconventional spaces that are also uncomfortable and inaccessible in New York, but also a great deal of durational shows. The theater needs this kind of thing because musicians do it. Comedians do it. Performance artists do it. Shea Stadium would host the 24-hour show that Smhoak Mosheein did for years.
LPW:
And Chris Gethard just did it, right? He just hosted his 24 hour show. We know a whole bunch of people who were involved in that.
TB:
Yah! There's a great history of that. And so there's a lot of people to learn from when it comes to that. And I think that it is also part of that hallucinatory thing. I remember performing this Peter Mills Weiss idea at 6:00 a.m.at the Silent Barn in one of the apartments. At that point, I think it was called Pleasure Jail, but it also had a bunch of different names… Champagne Room was one of them. We performed the pilot episode of Pretty Little Liars at 6:00 a.m. in that apartment, me and my friend Joey LePage.
LPW:
And that was a PMW idea?
TB:
Yeah.
LPW:
Pretty Little Liars specifically was a PMW idea?
TB:
Mm-hmm.
LPW:
That's hysterical. That is so funny.
TB:
And it was people that had already been at a show for soooo long. There were some people sleeping, some people heavily intoxicated. But it was also right when the sun was coming up… you know there's weird shit that happens when you have that flexibility and there's also a lot of risks. So, you know, take care.
LPW:
Oh, yes, yes, yes. As my mother loves to remind me - Have a first aid kit.
LC:
Oh, we need to get one of those. That's so true.
TB:
Yeah, please get a first aid kit.
LPW:
How did we not have a first aid kit for Wonderful Cringe?
LC:
Anyways, you live, you learn. Because my first aid kit that was part of my SM kit was stolen from me by, say it with me, The Brick Theater.
TB:
Well, steal one back.
LC:
I know. Actually, I almost did because I was just there, but it's depleted now.
LPW:
What I am really also very intrigued by about this hallucinatory state that we're talking about, this theater of altered consciousness, I guess you could say, is that when you enter a performance space that is a home and does not pretend to be not a home, that immediately puts you in a very specific headspace. And it's a headspace that exists to be disrupted, to be surprised. It's a blurring of the boundaries of public and private dichotomies. And that is so, so, so, so awesome to me. I, like as a theater maker, sure, but like especially as a performance artist, I am a really big fan of taking my junk, putting it on stage, dressing it up, and then being like, "Here you go." And you can't tell what's real and you can't tell what is. But I think one of the things that it was interesting to watch happen at the Wonderful Cringe performance was exactly what you're talking about, Laia. People coming in down the long hallway. “Take a look at this.”
LC:
Partially because of the space and because it's an apartment, but also partially because in the marketing of the show, it wasn't like “Wonderful Cringe at Box Machine”.
LPW:
People immediately walked in and had no clue how to behave, what was expected of them. And it was dark. It was pretty much completely dark except for the light of the TV. So you come in and it's the strange familiarity of like, "Oh, this is a home, but also I'm incredibly destabilized because the expectations for how to behave in a performance space and how to behave in a home are like bumping up against each other. And it's not clear where the separation is, you know especially with a performance like Wonderful Cringe, which used pretty much the entire apartment other than my room. And people were standing in my room. They had to. There was not enough room for people in the living room to be able to see the screen. So some people stood in my bedroom. And that, to me, was going to happen. And I knew it was going to happen. And the only thing I hide are my meds because nobody's taking my Vyvanse, not on my watch. Yeah.
LPW:
And once again, not to be like, "And this is an extension of our form." But Laia and I, not so long ago, came into the language of noise theater to describe what we do, which really does exist, like right in the middle of, like, is it a noise show? Is it a short play? Is it performance art? Is it experimental theater?
LC:
Like, where's the boundary?
LPW:
Do we care about the boundary?
LC:
Like, actually, we do care a lot about the boundary. We like to exist right in the boundary. We like the border. We care about how the boundary gets moved and manipulated and negotiated.
LPW:
And it is really awesome to me to see that happen to my home. And like for me as an artist, that just feels like a natural extension of what I do.
Laia and Nick Sanchez (Wonderful Cringe) working in box machine.
(Pause for a time check)
I wanted to put a button on this beat super quick, which is just that so much of my, I feel mostly in retrospect, like so much of my training as a theater artist and also, especially now that I'm halfway through my clinical training as a drama therapist, like so much of my training has been how do you take care of audiences and how do you you know in the first minutes of a show and train them to the expectations that they should have or maybe should isn't the right word there, but a professor of mine would always talk about in training the audience, like two pendulums. Audience has the potential to be in sync. And it’s not that we're putting people intentionally in danger or not taking care of people, but for the audience to come in and have no idea what to do. And that is a disruption of the dominant logic of how you are as an audience member and it is very exciting.
LPW:
And isn't that just what life is these days? Just a constant disruption of dominant logic? And a simultaneous reproduction of it, which is where the cognitive dissonance comes from, I would say. Back to you.
TB:
And I'd say something that I think you're sort of referencing, Laia, is how to take care of people within that because there is the expectation that you can only take care of people if you have ____, whether it's money or space or resources or whatever, is untrue. We have to do it even if we don't have those things. And so I think that is especially for the communities that we're a part of… the expectation that we'll have what we need, what we hoped for, will probably never be the case. So we still have to figure it out every day. So that's what it is. It's figuring it out every day.
LPW:
And it's how we do that while also making work that is transgressive and that is angry and that is passionate and that has a lot to say and a lot on its sleeve. And that sometimes makes you well, often makes you shudder a bit and makes you want to run away. I think Laia and I are both really interested in work that makes you want to run away. That is something that comes up a lot for us. Work that is not like particularly palatable. Or that convinces you that it's palatable, and then it turns the switch on you or it cranks it slowly, slowly, slowly. And how do we meet our ethos of , "Yeah, we care about the people who come into our space, and we don't want anybody passing out and having nobody tend to them." Or like, "If you need to throw up, the toilet's right there. We'll help you get there." While also being like, "We are drawn to violence, and we are drawn to … not like conservative reactionary work, but reactive work. And we are drawn to things that are aggressive and scary. And you know that's where we're at. I mean, how could it not be? Everything is boiling over all the time. And I think there's something really, really powerful in making work in something that feels like a safe environment or something that is traditionally considered like a safe environment, like a home, like a little domestic space where there are two cats and a Swiffer. And the work inside of it is this boiling, boiling thing.
LC:
I want to adjust something slightly you said, Leah, in regards to how I relate to it, which is that I don't know necessarily that I would say I'm interested in making work that people want to run away from, but rather the things that in the real world make us want to run away, I want the performance to allow us to drop deeper into it.
LPW:
I like that. I think that's right.
LC:
Back to you, Theresa.
TB:
Love it. Well, as we round out this what-I-can-only-assume-will-be-an-impossible-to-transcribe-interview, I guess I'm sort of curious what is next, literally. When is the next show? How do people find out about it? How do people pitch you on things? And two, do you have any important rules to express that you already have? And do you have any fantasies that you'd like to express for the record? And then in 10 years, we'll examine Box Machine and say, "What were those fantasies?” Could be interesting.
LC:
Can we turn this into a structured sort of checkout where each of us get one sentence to respond to each of those things?
TB:
I love that. Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. So one sentence to respond to literally what is next.
LPW:
Isa Nicdao, Val Ramirez, July 19th to 20th, durational performance. Follow us. Follow one or both of us on Instagram, if you're not currently.
TB:
There is not a Box Machine Instagram, so we just follow one or both of you? Great. That is how people find out about shows. A slightly longer scope of what is next after July 19th… Last week of August is your performance? Is there anything between July 19th and that?
LC:
We're sorting out some programming conversations with people, so not yet. But Laia and Leah, as laialeah, will be performing on July 26th at Catch Takes the Hudson Back.
LPW:
And we'll be spending the week there, which is super cool. And that will be like a small piece in development of what will be us really putting together the first of multiple pieces of Mobile Wash Female Locker Room.
TB:
That's so cool. I've only seen one show up there. Jim Fletcher was in a show with a dog.
LPW:
Oh, my God. I want to see Jim Fletcher with a dog. Are you kidding? I think this is my ideal theater-going experience.
TB:
It was January 2022, and it was the only Under the Radar show that could happen because it was just Jim and a dog and another solo monologue with Ismaïl ibn Conner.
It was great. Very worth the trip. It's a very cute town.
LPW:
Yeah. I'm really looking forward to it. We are excited to be in the grass. We're not excited about the ticks, but we're excited to be out of the city and to just sort of really play. And video work because we got these babies (gestures to a stack of TVs in the closet).
LC:
Oh, and I got some extra BNC cables at the church yard sale. Yes. So $1 each.
TB:
Special shout-outs to MFTA and Laia’s church yard sale.
LPW:
Special shout out to Leigh Honigman's Honigman and Son's MFTA account, which keeps this entire city running.
LC: And the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Susquehanna Valley.
LPW:
And thank you to Jon Schatzberg's big arms and Isa Nicdao's van. Yeah. Absolutely.
TB:
Small side note… Jon's big arms reminded me of this. But if you can find a place that's still showing Secret Mall Apartment, it is an amazing documentary about these artists in Providence, Rhode Island that built an apartment in the mall that they had for four years before getting discovered.
LPW:
Wow!
TB:
And it was an art project. It's so inspiring. And I think really speaks to what you two are doing right now. So you should definitely check it out.
(Pivot pause)
All right. So last questions.
LC:
We'll try to keep it to one sentence.
TB:
How do people pitch you?
Both:
We're still figuring that out.
TB:
That's all we need to know for now! You'll figure it out. You'll let people know on your Instagram. But also, if people want to reach out to you, they should.
LPW:
Yeah. Absolutely. They can DM either one of us.
TB:
I forgot there are two more. Do you have any rules right now?
LPW:
Sorry, there was just a crazy bolt of lightning.
LC:
Yeah, I saw it on your face.
(Pause)
This isn't a rule, but there are two cats, and unfortunately, they're not going to leave so if you have a severe cat allergy, that is an area in which we cannot accommodate.
LPW:
I can swiffer extra hard. I can buy you antihistamines. I can literally bring you a little bowl of Zyrtec, but that is part of the space.
LC:
I mean, also, like no fire. We can't swing that.
LPW:
Yeah. No fire.
TB: Perfect. Great rules. And then fantasy. Each of you gets one fantasy for what Box Machine is and can be.
LPW:
Well, in the sort of philosophical, what's our ethos, blah, blah, blah, blah sort of dream. I want this to be a space that people feel like they can show up at, that they don't need to be friends with people or have an in or whatever. Like I don't want it to be the kind of environment that you walk into and go, "Oh, there's a specific social hierarchy here.
Or what matters here is my proximity to Laia or Leah or who the artist is." You know?
LC:
Which I think also, truthfully, is something that'll be a very challenging thing to fight against, just sort of how group dynamics work. And it is literally your apartment.
LPW:
Literally my apartment. Also my dream is a week of programming where every night it's a different artist.
LC:
My dream is to get even just like an 8 or 16 channel stage setter dimming console. One of those dinky little things. Because we can't dim anything right now.
TB:
You know I love an achievable fantasy, right?
LC:
Yeah.
TB:
And it's also good to express your fantasies because somebody who reads this might be able to help you.
LC:
I guess to be even more specific about my fantasy, I would love a couple Leviton dimmer packs as well as an 8 or 16 channel stage setting mini console. Please and thank you.
TB:
I love it. Well, thank you. Let's see what that transcription is. (It was unhinged and this version is EDITED) But yeah, thank you for having this conversation. Thank you to your parents, Leah.
LPW:
Thank you to my parents. Huge shout out. Truly, truly, truly. And the secret is that you have more friends with rich parents than you think you do. They're just not telling you. They are not disclosing it, but there are so many people in New York City with parents who are giving them money. And the truth is that I think that more of that money could go towards the people, but you know whatever.
TB:
You know If anyone out there has rich parents that wants to pay for me to come back to New York, Please. That's my fantasy. I'll put it out there too. But yeah. And thank you for doing this work. You know It's so important.This is how the cool shit keeps happening, and people have to be interested and brave and curious enough to actually make the space and make it happen. And a lot of people want somebody else to make it happen for them. And I get that. But that's just not the reality of how cool shit happens. And you have the space. When you have the space, you have the skills and you have the community - Why not?
Both:
Thanks for putting us in a room together, Theresa.
TB:
It was a very magical room. I'll say that. Can you imagine not having been in a room together? What the fuck?
LC:
Well, I think there's a certain degree of inevitability.
LPW:
Yeah. Because also, Laia and I went to the same Shakespeare program in Stratford, Ontario.
LC:
Yeah one week apart.
LPW:
One week apart in 2016. Yeah.
TB:
You know Sara Holdren and I went to the same Shakespeare camp in Staunton, Virginia.
LPW:
Really?
LC:
I have to go.
(“Goodbyes” and “love yous” and “so good to see yous” and “talk to you soons” are uttered)
laialeah perform “Update For Our Community” at SalON!, 2025