It’s a pleasant August day in Northwest Washington. Traffic hums, lunchtime pedestrians meander along.
Just after lunchtime rush, I find a café table at Baker’s Daughter on K Street NW. A reserved sign, a paper bag, and headphones mark my space. As the low rumble of traffic, pierced by an occasional siren, competes with the counter conversation going on behind me, I don the headset. Push play.
A soothing voice — John King’s — reassures me: “Some people find it hard to sit in a café. Alone. With just their thoughts. Don’t worry, we’re going to keep you company this next while.”
But I’m not worried. I’ve long been a soloist in cafés, and life.
For the next 20 minutes, a story unwinds about a son, a mother, and an ailing grandmother. But stories, like life, are never so simple. And this one eggs the listener in through a series of instructive tasks using items from the paper bag.
One Moment Now may not feel like theater to purists who expect a stage, lights, costumes, an audience to applaud, and the like. Rather, this singular moment is an exploration of one’s self and one’s experiences. The story told through dialogue and narration is one of relationships, memory, love, and loss. Ask me now to recount the plot points and I couldn’t do it. But ask me how I felt, what I thought, how those 20 minutes alone but amid the bustle of a public café reflected and refracted my own life, and I could speak for an hour, pinpointing highs and dips in my own meandering lifeline that have nothing — and everything — to do with the script composed by John King and Finbarr Doyle and performed by Casey, Helen Roche, and Bairbre Ní Chaoimh. Along with the storytelling, sound was conceived by Jenny O’Malley and designed by Leon Henry, and the piece was produced by Tilly Taylor.
This “table-top audio experience” was created by Murmuration, a Dublin-based theater collective that has been experimenting with narrative sound installations in public spaces. This work, Murmuration’s fourth, premiered at the historic Bewley’s Café in Dublin where everyone from playwright Richard Sheridan to Thomas Moore to James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, and Bob Geldof drank coffee and wrote. DC’s Irish arts organization Solas Nua is no stranger to producing site-specific works; One Moment Now marks its U.S. premiere with Solas Nua’s presentation, which runs through September 1 on Tuesdays and Thursdays between noon and 1:30 p.m. Only four people can be accommodated for each 20-minute session, so advance booking is required.
This performative and participatory experience — I don’t want to describe too much and spoil the surprises — draws on the senses — aural, visual, olfactory, and tactile. I suppose if one buys a cup of coffee (it’s Julius Meinl, a Viennese brew for coffee aficionados), taste would come into play, though I don’t recommend drinking or eating while you listen and participate. To get the full effect of Murmuration’s work, full attention is required. During my 20 minutes, I closed my eyes on occasion. I allowed my body to shift and settle, grounding myself in the space, feeling my arms on the table, feet on the floor. The narration and conversations sometimes felt like eavesdropping, other times like Proustian remembrances, or half dreams. When it was over. I didn’t want it to end, but I didn’t need more. I remained at the table for I don’t know how long. Reluctant to leave my meditative state.
If all of this sounds elliptical, that’s purposeful and necessary to not hinder each person’s unique experiences with this work. My advice, if you have a free lunch and can make it downtown to the corner of 12th and K Streets this month, take the chance. It’s only 20 minutes — a moment in time. One coffee bean, as it were, in a hill of them. One Moment Now may change you, delight you, frustrate you, or make you reflect on life in a way that hasn’t occurred to you before. It may take you to a place you need to go, or you may be exactly where you should be after listening. It’s time well spent.
Running Time: 20 minutes.
One Moment Now by Murmuration plays through August 31, 2023, on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 11 am and 2 pm presented by Solas Nua at Baker’s Daughter, 1201 K Street NW, Washington, DC. Free reservations are available online.
The program for One Moment Now is online here.
SEE ALSO:
In a coffee shop, Solas Nua and Dublin’s Murmuration present an audio-play (news story, July 27, 2023)
