By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN WEST — There's one show in the heart of the Theater District that doesn't have a single bad seat in the house.
“Theatre for One,” a project masterminded by set designer and NYU Tisch School teacher Christine Jones, is currently on a ten-day stay in Times Square, during which about 300 performances are being offered to an audience of one.
Musician Saskia Lane is among the participating artists who provide short shows on a rotating basis inside a 9-foot by 4-foot booth at 46th Street and Broadway.
For Lane, who plays the ukulele and sings for three minutes, the experience of performing in such a small setting initially brought anxiety about her audience’s reactions.
“Then all that peripheral noise went away, and I just started to connect with the person, and look them in the eye, and see what that felt like, and how they reacted to that,” Lane said.
Jones, whose set design credits include Spring Awakening, a Tony Award nomination for American Idiot and a music video for Ben Folds Five, received her initial inspiration for the project at a wedding in 2002, according to her website.
After a magician performed for her personally while standing at a close distance, Jones became fascinated with finding a way within theater to mimic the intimate experience of a confessional, psychotherapy session or peep show booth.
Jones brought her booth, designed in collaboration with architecture firm LOT-EK, to Broadway at the invitation of the Times Square Alliance.
Three days into the Times Square residency (which runs through May 23), Jones was upbeat about the turnout and the response of audience members.
“I hope that they’ll just have a moment where they feel like in the middle of one of the busiest places in the world, they’ve had a private, intimate very special experience,” Jones said.
