STRANGE LOOPS

Collaborators: Todd Moellenberg and Matt Savitsky 


Strange Loops is an improv-based theatre production performance concerning the relationship with our mothers. Performed over two days, the piece included live music and 24 Undergraduate and Graduate students in theatre creating original material.

Jocelyn Acosta, Paola Angarita, Brian Arechiga, Dennis Bautista, Cassandra Britton, Joseph Caldera, Jaylene Cesena, Angelica Contreras, Casey Cuellar, Adam Ferguson, Paul Flores, Dane Gbrayes, Bryan Ha, Jess Jones, Anthony Karambelas, Luciana Di Laura, Jeremy Leochner, Maritza Leon, Emmanuelle Love, Dan Myroradov, Kevin Perez, Giselle Rios, Brenda Robles, Axel Star, Matt Stepan


Supported by the Puffin Foundation, and the RSCA grant of California State University Los Angeles.

The Family Room Collective is Todd Moellenberg, Sylke Rene Meyer, and Matt Savitsky. TFRC is a Los Angeles based queer performing artist group formed in 2018. The group utilizes interpersonal investigations and group dynamics to expand the idea of participatory performance art into the realm of everyday life. TFRC practices include language games, spatial story design, model/doll making, and improv theatre to ground the indeterminate nature of responding to the output of its participants.


PAPER OVER

, The Family Room Collective presented a series of open work sessions over the course of four weekends. The gallery doubled as our film set, evolving from an installation of newspaper cutouts and backdrops, where we improvised live films using a Google chat room. Our movements within TSA, the Bendix building, its inhabitants, and the surrounding streets in downtown Los Angeles were be fed into the space, continuously projecting images and sounds we encountered. We processed phrases read and overheard into cut-up texts and Markov chains built into sonic loops through our speaker system. The performance of live recording in the installation expanded, contracted, and distorted the scale of all material inside the installation.

These live film events comprised our working methods, which, in this iteration, combined live theatrical improvisation with automated online tools. This structure allowed us to quickly process and combine visual and textual debris to build narratives of the present day. These narratives reflected our positions in time and space as well as interpersonal relationships that are constantly evolving. The audience inhabited our echo chamber of information overload, as we investigated what it means to collectively record the present moment.

The Family Room Collective is Todd Moellenberg, Sylke Rene Meyer, and Matt Savitsky. TFRC is a Los Angeles based queer performing artist group formed in 2018. The group utilizes interpersonal investigations and group dynamics to expand the idea of participatory performance art into the realm of everyday life. TFRC practices include language games, spatial story design, model/doll making, and improv theatre to ground the indeterminate nature of responding to the output of its participants.

HOUSE OF FEAR

 is a highly collaborative exhibition that brought together TFRC with student artists and actors, who worked together to visualize their fears into built environments and live performances.

Participants were interviewed and characters created based on each individual narrative. The characters were developed in conjunction with the spatial and material elements of the exhibition, allowing for the show’s continual evolution until the culminating performances. 

THE MINUTES

This improvised project adapted and situated the East L.A., 1968: 'Walkout!' in the context of current academic institutions. Improvised story segments were based on real events, employing projection technology, into improv theatre, and gameplay.