Welded steel, 32 x 40 x 18, 2002.
A theatre is at its most charged in the minutes before the curtain goes up, when everything is ready and nothing has happened. The sculpture is a stage in that interval, and nobody is on it.
A half-disc platform sweeps forward at the center like an apron stage. Behind it at the left a bank of tall vertical ribs stands bunched like a curtain drawn to one side. At the right a tall plate stands like a wing, with a row of short pegs down its edge. A flat bar spans the top like a proscenium header, and below it a large curved cut in the back plate opens like a moon-shaped aperture. The header, the curtain and the wing frame an empty center, and everything is oriented toward the place where the performer would enter.
The scale is a model’s, 32 x 40 x 18 inches. A visitor looks down into the stage from above, from a seat no audience member has, with the whole house in view and the set standing ready. The steel is dark and unlit and nothing in it is in motion. Opening night is the performance not yet begun, and the sculpture holds it at that point.
