Aqua vital

After nearly a decade of enjoying/admiring Radiohole and reviewing their shows, I finally got a chance to sit down with them and do a profile. (Yes, I know, what were you waiting for?)  Check it out here. Strictly a preview of the company's new show, Fluke, and a brief taste of their designing and method, but it's a good primer on this company that some of us critics love so much. To be honest, I wasn't crazy about Fluke when I reviewed it for TONY last spring. Then I learned that the Radiohole folks—Eric Dyer, Maggie Hoffman (pictured), Scott Halvorsen Gillette and Erin Douglass—weren't, either. Lots of technical and rehearsal issues got in the way of the show, which they built at their Williamsburg HQ, the Collapsable Hole, but transported to P.S. 122. The show uses some pretty fancy audio-directing technology, called Audiospotlight, and Gillette, who lives in Vermont, appears in the show via Internet video chat room. (I was also told that Gillette will run the virtual box office, keeping his webcam trained on any cheapskates or box-robbers.) I'm really looking forward to this version. The set, festooned with all manner of visual puns and references to seafaring and diverse nauticalia, is typically gorgeous. Originating space seems very important to the group, and their shows are always more compelling in the Hole. Although I'd love to see Wurst performed at BAM's Harvey. But to expect BAM to present NYC's thriving avant-garde scene…That would be too much, no? I mean, just imagine if BAM programmed an actual month of New York-based performance groups: Radiohole, NTUSA, Target Margin Theater, Collapsable Giraffe, Big Art Group. Groups you liked, and maybe ones you didn't. How sad that will never happen.