The Set Up is the second movement of Rachel Bernsen’s loose performance suite, Novel Formats. Each movement invites a different group of artists to experiment with a fluid vision of performance, utilizing their range of expertise and individuality in the service of enacting her improvisational and choreographic structures. Novel Formats #2: The Set Up uses the dynamic of three as its defining structure to explore synthesis, harmony, and discord within the construct of an interdisciplinary performing ensemble.

Many of Rachel Bernsen’s projects are investigations in collaboration and improvisation. Her series, Novel Formats #1-7,  is a set of seven performance events, each prompted by the desire to rethink the understanding of and experience with improvisation as a form of performance and explore the boundaries between real time decision making and overt theatricality.

Each installment asks the question: what happens when we come together in different social configurations, each with its own possibilities for improvisation and contact? Improvisation asks us to notice what we’re doing in the moment, to question learned and internalized value systems. We think our senses are right and true but so much is learned, habitual. Novel Formats aims to interrupt these patterns through novelty, risk, and real time human connection.

$5-10 recommended donation.