Byrne. He can’t be held up to the usual mirrors.” And when Byrne asked, “Mom, what other mirrors are there?” she’d answered, “Oh—glass at night, and tinfoil. And some people are. They’re walking knives—you can see yourself in them, but you’re cut up.”
The Theater of Geometry was a shabby one-story near the river. Its bijou was grimy and the graying varnish on its doors was cracking where it wasn’t worn through. Byrne first noted the dilapidation, then turned a loose brass knob, walked in. An information desk sat in the center of a small lobby with a water-stained parquet floor. No one was there. On the desk were a few brochures—local attractions, two area sleight schools, some others—Byrne picked up the nonglossy one with the eyestraining font. He read its brief synopsis before entering the theater. It was succinctly put, if a bit irregular. 12
The house wasn’t lit, but the stage was. Byrne found himself a seat in the near-black of the second to last row. He looked down into the space— there is a funeral here, a funeral for a church. Byrne closed his eyes and took in the dust and the draft, things without scent that nonetheless trigger memory by moving through the sinus cavities. Byrne found himself remembering not the performances he’d seen as a child but winter in his attic room—hiding out with a book or a pen on the chill slice of floor between his and Marvel’s twin beds. The room had proved an inadequate space for his mind. Like any theater.
Byrne stood and made his way down the central aisle. Not immediately seeing stairs, he threw his leg up and vaulted onto the lip of the proscenium, knocking a few footlights out of focus in the process. Screw the funeral. On the stage were three long glass cases, variously filled with the elements of sleight. Architectures. Costumes. Documents. Folded-over index cards with typewritten descriptions identified each item.
An architecture used in the sleightwork CARAPACE, first navigated in 1896. Color in the glass comes from the incorporation of iron and copper chlorides during the glassblowing process. The use of pigmentation was discontinued during World War I. A needlessly extravagant practice for minimal and tawdry effect, it was never reinstated.
Web worn by Agatha Spalding, founding member of the THEATER OF GEOMETRY and later, the first artistic director of BÖHME. The mirrors in older costumes were shattered and sanded down by the sleightists themselves in a charitable effort to withhold misfortune from the troupe lacemaker.
Accoutrements to Miss Spalding’s web. A flesh-colored leotard and underlay. Modern performers wear nothing beneath their webs, claiming extra garments constrict. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as today, the costumes were not specific to individual works, and so were worn repeatedly. Undergarments helped to maintain decency while minimizing the need to launder, and thus ruin, the intricate tatting.
A page from a Miss Spalding’s diary. Professional diaries such as this one were kept by many of the founding members of the THEATER OF GEOMETRY at Antonia Bugliesi’s behest.
A ticket from a sleight performance circa 1892. Within a decade of its founding, the THEATER OF GEOMETRY was attraction enough to draw private coaches from New York one Saturday afternoon each month, depositing their gentlemen back in Manhattan the following evening. According to the preserved correspondence between the Hon. Louis A. Lumadue and his brother Philip, the men returned from Philadelphia both morally intact and “unquestionably edified.”
Three pages duplicated from the fifty-seven-page document copy for MUSIC 2, one of Revoix’s original structures. Due to copyright regulations and in deference to their ineffable nature, these pages are partial (the precursor has been removed) and nonconsecutive.
Please Note: All of Miss Spalding’s paraphernalia has been donated by her great-great-grandniece, Mrs. Johann Bauer
The Theater of Geometry was a shabby one-story near the river. Its bijou was grimy and the graying varnish on its doors was cracking where it wasn’t worn through. Byrne first noted the dilapidation, then turned a loose brass knob, walked in. An information desk sat in the center of a small lobby with a water-stained parquet floor. No one was there. On the desk were a few brochures—local attractions, two area sleight schools, some others—Byrne picked up the nonglossy one with the eyestraining font. He read its brief synopsis before entering the theater. It was succinctly put, if a bit irregular. 12
The house wasn’t lit, but the stage was. Byrne found himself a seat in the near-black of the second to last row. He looked down into the space— there is a funeral here, a funeral for a church. Byrne closed his eyes and took in the dust and the draft, things without scent that nonetheless trigger memory by moving through the sinus cavities. Byrne found himself remembering not the performances he’d seen as a child but winter in his attic room—hiding out with a book or a pen on the chill slice of floor between his and Marvel’s twin beds. The room had proved an inadequate space for his mind. Like any theater.
Byrne stood and made his way down the central aisle. Not immediately seeing stairs, he threw his leg up and vaulted onto the lip of the proscenium, knocking a few footlights out of focus in the process. Screw the funeral. On the stage were three long glass cases, variously filled with the elements of sleight. Architectures. Costumes. Documents. Folded-over index cards with typewritten descriptions identified each item.
An architecture used in the sleightwork CARAPACE, first navigated in 1896. Color in the glass comes from the incorporation of iron and copper chlorides during the glassblowing process. The use of pigmentation was discontinued during World War I. A needlessly extravagant practice for minimal and tawdry effect, it was never reinstated.
Web worn by Agatha Spalding, founding member of the THEATER OF GEOMETRY and later, the first artistic director of BÖHME. The mirrors in older costumes were shattered and sanded down by the sleightists themselves in a charitable effort to withhold misfortune from the troupe lacemaker.
Accoutrements to Miss Spalding’s web. A flesh-colored leotard and underlay. Modern performers wear nothing beneath their webs, claiming extra garments constrict. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as today, the costumes were not specific to individual works, and so were worn repeatedly. Undergarments helped to maintain decency while minimizing the need to launder, and thus ruin, the intricate tatting.
A page from a Miss Spalding’s diary. Professional diaries such as this one were kept by many of the founding members of the THEATER OF GEOMETRY at Antonia Bugliesi’s behest.
A ticket from a sleight performance circa 1892. Within a decade of its founding, the THEATER OF GEOMETRY was attraction enough to draw private coaches from New York one Saturday afternoon each month, depositing their gentlemen back in Manhattan the following evening. According to the preserved correspondence between the Hon. Louis A. Lumadue and his brother Philip, the men returned from Philadelphia both morally intact and “unquestionably edified.”
Three pages duplicated from the fifty-seven-page document copy for MUSIC 2, one of Revoix’s original structures. Due to copyright regulations and in deference to their ineffable nature, these pages are partial (the precursor has been removed) and nonconsecutive.
Please Note: All of Miss Spalding’s paraphernalia has been donated by her great-great-grandniece, Mrs. Johann Bauer
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