Friday Phone Call # 58

600 HIGHWAYMEN: If you don't know these guys and their work, check out their website. Michael and Abby are following their own muse and it is taking them along the road less traveled. I saw their piece The Record at Under the Radar this year. We talk a bit about the mechanics of this work, which essentially has 35 performers (most non-professionals) rehearsed individually and only coming together in the moment of the unfolding of the performance itself. An earlier piece that is referenced in the call was their response to Death of a Salesman, a piece entitled This Great Country—and in significant ways the piece that put them on the radar before Under the Radar. I get into some crevices of their progress to date—trying to unpack how they are developing both their work and their identity as a company, how the path from obscurity ("20 people in a basement") to international touring is treating them and what it teaches us to hear from people in the middle of that crossing. This is a call that flew by for me, and left me determined to hear more from them a little further along that path. And if you can get to the Mt. Tremper festival this summer, you have a chance to see them in action.