Fall 2007

00:07 SEC. (Development Workshop II)
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00:07 SEC. is a new theater piece based on Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book Blink. It is an ensemble work that uses lecture, event recreation, live psychology experiments, and explosive dance to explore the ways in which we as humans reveal our unconscious biases--specifically about race--through a split-second decision-making process.

00:07 SEC. is currently entering its second stage of development.

PROJECT HISTORY

00:07 SEC. began development at NYU's Experimental Theater Wing in November of 2006 with:

NYU performers:

Lauren Blumenfeld, Nichi Douglas, Keiko Green, Thomas Hennes, Anastasia Holoboff, Kate Hopkins, Natalie Kuhn, Eric Lockley, Stephane Magloire, Ochuole Ode, Scott Riehs, Katie Ruben

and guest artists:

Jody Elff ~ sound

Ben Kato ~ lights

Jesse Hawley ~ asstiant director

thank you to Rosemary Quinn, Nanc Allen, and all of the students and staff at NYU/ETW for making this workshop so successful!

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MORE HISTORY

In 2004 I saw Malcolm Gladwell speaking about his book Blink on C-SPAN. I had read the book some months earlier and was taken with how the ideas seemed to alter my perspective and make me more aware of my own unconscious behavioral patterns. As Malcolm spoke, the ideas of the book—poignant and riveting—still felt just out of reach. I thought they could be instantly understood and used to great advantage through simple demonstrations. I approached Malcolm with the idea of helping him craft his tour speeches. His tour was winding down at the time, but we struck up a conversation about creating a theater piece based on the ideas in his book. I was simultaneously offered a directing gig at NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing, and decided it would be a good place to engage with Blink and see if it was even possible to stage this work of non fiction. With the NYU students I created an exploratory workshop called 00:07 SEC. in November 2006. Stylistically the show employed simple, elegant multi media presentations fused with energetic physical performance in a dynamic combination of lecture, event re-creation, participatory experiments and dance. For example, we conducted psychological bias experiments with the audience to reveal their unconscious attitudes on race, and then later in the show re-enacted the shooting of Amadou Diallo, both in real time and slowed down, to show the micro events that made up the incident as a whole. The results were remarkable, moving and powerful. Demonstrating live the function and power of rapid cognition crystallized how it affects the moment-to-moment interactions of our everyday lives, and it seemed possible that illuminating these unconscious behavioral patterns had the potential to lead to societal change. It was also clear that the project needed to continue and so I am now in the process of continuing development on the piece The NYU workshop focused on many aspects and examples from the book, and I am now distilling the most emotionally resonant elements and expanding them. The centerpiece and emotional core of 00:07 SEC. is the story of Amadou Diallo, a 22-year-old Liberian immigrant who was mistakenly gunned down in front of his Bronx apartment by four plainclothes police officers in 1999. There was no evidence that the four officers were racists, and yet clearly the shooting couldn’t have just been a simple accident. As it turned out, the officers had made a series of critical misjudgments, and what interests me most is that in the time it took four officers to exit their car, identify Diallo as dangerous, fire 43 shots and kill him, only seven seconds were reported to have elapsed. What was it that happened in those seven seconds? What did the officers see that made them react so quickly and violently? How did the officers’ preconceived unconscious attitudes affect the situation? Would you or I have acted any differently? How can we draw attention to a subtle and complex set of psychological conditions that play an integral part in our day-to-day interactions? How can a new awareness change us and lead to a stronger, more unified and more integrated society? These are some of the issues this piece explores.

Support 00:07 SEC. (click)

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