INTERVIEW: Be one of the lucky 15 to experience ‘Let Me Cook For You’
Photo: Let Me Cook For You features Orietta Crispino, who also wrote the piece. Photo courtesy of Gaia Squarci / Provided by Emily Owens PR with permission.
Each night, Orietta Crispino takes to the stage at Theaterlab and looks out at the assembled crowd. Due to the intimate nature of her new theatrical-cooking mashup, she’s able to count the number of theatergoers. That’s because her show, Let Me Cook For You, is intended to be experienced by only 15 people at a time. This means the two-and-a-half hours in Crispino’s presence are quite intimate, filled with storytelling and culinary ingredients.
Press notes indicate that Crispino’s show, which continues to May 28, is focused on three words: food, fashion and fable. As a home-cooked meal is created before the audience’s eyes, garments from Crispino’s fashion collection are examined and passed around. Stories about life and the kindness of strangers round out the evening.
Crispino, who was born in Italy, is the artistic director of Theaterlab. Over the years, she has written, directed and acted in a number of productions, including Passport No. 23.922, which is about the life of Tina Modotti, according to her official biography. Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Crispino about her new show, which is directed and co-created by Liza Cassidy. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
Where did the idea for Let Me Cook For You come from?
It started first with the gallery space at Theaterlab that I had just built: a reflective, intimate, all white space perfect to show art. In that context I thought, what if I offer my own story as a meal to be shared and consumed with the audience, almost like a ritual?
I had never done a solo show and certainly nothing as personal. Let Me Cook For You, at its core, is a meditation on a life in service of others and the creation of beauty. Cooking a beautiful and tasty meal for the audience is how I invite others into my world.
What type of intimacy is achieved with only 15 people in the audience?
That’s a good question! When we go to the theater, normally the audience is sitting in the dark, looking at the stage, witnessing the action. We don’t know the person sitting next to us nor do we need to. But in Let Me Cook For You, we are invited to a space where the separation between the stage and the house doesn’t exist. The anonymity granted to us in big theaters fades away, and we are acutely aware of the other and ourselves at the same time. It’s a function not only of the intimacy of the space but also of its being all white, a reflective chamber where everybody is visible. We all become ‘friends with strangers’ we share the journey and a meal with. I think it is a very tender kind of intimacy, a peaceful experience.
What’s on the menu each night?
I cook the same meal every time, even though I make a point of how different it is every time! Sautéed mixed vegetables, on a bed of rice, with lemon marinated tofu and shaved raw carrots. I chop the vegetables during the performance. It’s really magical to see how the dish comes together in such a short time, caring for the texture, the different flavors and foods, and their placement on the plate. It’s really like witnessing someone making a painting.
In the third act, we also have an Italian cake served with Marzemino, a very unique red wine.
Are there certain meals that remind you of your childhood?
Of course, I have a vivid memory of my grandmother cooking! She was great at making fresh pasta! Once a month she would turn the whole apartment into a drying facility for fresh pasta: tagliolini, tagliatelle, lasagne, gnocchi! Oh! The gnocchi she made was out of this world! And Zabaglione, egg yolk beaten with sugar, so sweet and creamy!
What would you say is the power and impact of clothes and fashion?
I think that we all know that what we choose to wear speaks to us and the world about ourselves — the self we’d like to be, or how we want to be seen. In the theater, a costume is the first layer of the identity of a character. In the second piece of the trilogy, This Would Look Good On You, I play with the many garments that were given to me by others over the years, and I question through those clothes if somehow those gifts contained an image, an idea of myself that I tried to embody for the others. Fashion somehow is a tribal affair: Clothes give us a sense of cultural belonging and yet promise us that we are unique.
What’s it like to work with Liza Cassidy?
It’s been a real privilege to develop this work with Liza. We’ve been collaborating since 2006 when we first opened Theaterlab on 14th Street. Liza is a beautiful performer and a visual artist, so there couldn’t have been a better presence and eye in the room to shape Let Me Cook For You. We started by creating the space, the narrative structure, and then started creating text and images through improvisation, testing the material in front of an audience during the last five years. Liza’s keen eye and extreme sensibility has been crucial to creating the ritual form of the piece, shaping its content and the space that contains it. We have developed such a creative vocabulary over the years that I absolutely trust her in guiding my performance. We laugh a lot, and together we are really adventurous and rigorous at the same time. It’s been a true joy!
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Let Me Cook For You, written and performed by Orietta Crispino, continues through May 28 at Theaterlab in New York City. Click here for more information and tickets.
