Hi, everyone! This is Alan Patrick Kenny, writing you from a Starbucks in Astoria, NY. I'm taking my first (much needed) vacation in a year, thanks to having the inimitable Brian Isaac Phillips pinch-hitting for me on our production of Take Me Out.

So, much to the dismay (or joy) of my staff, I have high-tailed it to my old stomping ground of NYC, to selfishly catch up on some of the best that Broadway and Off- has to offer. If you've been following the theatre season, the new crop of the American musical has been anything but ripe, but there's been an explosion of exceptionally acted, ensemble-driven plays, and that makes a frigid Manhattan in January the place to be.

After arriving Sunday night after a relaxing 2 day drive through the windy mountains Pennsylvania, I hit the streets on Monday. For any neophytes who might be reading, Monday is basically THE dark day on and off Broadway, with a few exceptions of a couple megahits offering performances.

So to get my theatre fix on a not-so-Manic Monday due to the holiday, I ventured to the world of Off-Off-Broadway and site-specific theatre.

OFFENDING THE AUDIENCE by John Handke

The Flea has been an Off-Broadway/Off-Off-Broadway small experimental theatre for the last 10 years in TriBeCa. Sigourney Weaver - who is married to the artistic director Jim Simpson - has notably appeared there in the original production of The Guys.

Last November, the NY Times did a great feature on The Flea's resident company - The Bats.

This ensemble of 38 actors is notable because the actors don't get paid, and they have to do 10 hours of work at the theatre - "Bat Hours" - each week. And yet they fight to work there.

Their latest production is an experimental piece from the 60's by John Handke brashly titled Offending the Audience .

For those of you who have not ventured into the world of Off-Off-Broadway, any rag-tag experiences you think you might have experienced in our scene doesn't hold a candle to some of the storefront "theatres" NYC has to offer.

The Flea is relatively upscale by Off-Off- standards. Audience was performed in their subterranean Downstairs Theatre, an oblong former office room, fitting about 60 people in 2 rows of plastic folding chairs against a wall. The pinned-together, mismatched black curtain was pulled across the room by the artistic director to reveal a row off all 38 members of the Bats staring back at the audience.

Only...the "houselights" (actually stage fernels) pointed at the audience never went down. Instead we, the audience were directly spoken to for the next hour, told that "There is no play, there is no plot, there is only us".

What transpired was a well-modulated, well-staged under the circumstances, ode to a type of theatre stripped away of all pretense. At times fiercely poetic, this nameless ensemble intoned, bellowed, and contradicted themselves in a way that assumed nothing - no responsibility for what was occurring, what was not occurring, and our exspectations.

In an intimate space such as this (an understatement), the audience was forced to become part of the action by the players directly addressing each and every one of us. This was nerve-wracking, disconcerting, and sometimes exhilarating.

After a significant amount of time, the piece's premise began to wear thin, if only because the audience was so "put on the spot" that it became difficult to enjoy the poetry of the text and the beauty of the connection we had with the ensemble, because we were acting and responding too.

at Midnight, I got to take in? perform in? BE in? a new site-specific, experimental piece called Etiquette by the Foundry Theatre. Managed by Cincinnati's and New Stage's friend Aaron Lee Morris, I got to participate in a late "showing" of this intriguing work? piece? experience?

The show, after being in view around the world, had it's New York Premiere as a part of the Public Theater's Under The Radar festival, and due to the popularity of a NY Times video feature, sold out in a few hours, and was recently extended.

2 people become the play and the players at a table in a restaurant. Person A and B put on headphones, and listen to sonorous British voices instruct you through the piece, full of "audience participation" with props that involve all of the senses. At a corner table in the busy, working Ukrainian restaurant Veselka in the East Village, a romantic, 3 act play, complete with complicated dialogue scenes, powerful imagery, and evocative sound design, Etiquette has the power to transport the open and willing, shock the curious, and alienate the self-conscious, especially if you "do" the piece with someone that you don't know.

Aaron did the piece with me, and because we've done, it was, I'm sure, a very different experience than the lay-person would have.

After experiencing both of these shows in the same evening, I was left with some significant questions on what the function of an audience really is in the theatre. Unlike most pieces of theatre, tonight I was asked to participate, to be present and viewed, to be the focus, and to be one of the players.

I've never personally been a fan of audience participation, because I've always loved the anonymity of theatre. Here, however, I was required to be a player in the proceedings. It certainly demanded that I be present in a fuller way during the proceedings, but I can't help but feel that I as robbed of that wonderful gift that an audience receives by just taking everything in, with the only obligation of response to beat their hands together in approval.