“It was no dream. I had simply stepped into another world that looked, shook and smelled like Times Square.”
YOU-The City (1988)
YOU-The City was a play attended by one person at a time. By appointment only, a prospective client showed up at One Times Square and said to the doorman, "I'm looking for you." This was the beginning of a two-hour journey through the public and private places of midtown Manhattan, meeting a series of about 15 individuals, all of whom seemed to know something about "you". A church, a peepshow, a playground, an apartment, pushed into the back of a car and driven off alone with even the cabbie in on the inside of your head.
Site specific productions of YOU-The City followed in London (1989), The Hague, Zurich, and Ljubljana (1990), and Munich (1991). In 2001, Rotterdam Cultural Capital of Europe Festival presented a new and extended version of YOU-The City, a production of the Festival and the Rotterdamse Schouwburg (City Theatre), involving the collaboration of the main Rotterdam theatre companies: the Ro Theater, the Onafhankelijk Toneel (Independent Theater), Bonheur, and Jeugd Theater Hofplein.
The book of YOU-The City was published by Roof Books in 1990, accompanied by images, extensive performance notes and a new afterword by Fiona Templeton.
