Construction Stories

Construction Stories
Dance Theater Workshop
NY, NY
1991 - 1994

Writer, solo performer, Director. Framing out walls, hammering, mixing cement, installing locks amidst intimate, ironic, precise stories about love, work, death and dignity from a working class perspective.

An evening of plainspoken, richly textured stories told while doing construction on stage. Round Don't Fit Square, a story about the ending of a 17 year relationship as a mortise lock is installed in a scarlet red door, is followed by Mixing Story, a silent strenuous mixing of sand, water, mortar into cement to the accompaniment of Bach's Cello Sonata #4. Killer Brick Memorial Wall, where a stack of old bricks from a now demolished building is made into a wall as one minute stories are told about co-workers killed on the job.

In Construction Stories, Pottenger - a construction worker for the last 20 years - brings a builder's perspective to the nature of things, speaking to the daily beauty and brutality of physical labor. Dance Theater Workshop NY NY 1991, SUSHI Neo-Fest San Diego CA & Highways Los Angeles CA 1992 ICA London England 1993 Green Room Manchester England 1993 Theater Rhinoceros San Francisco CA 1994 excerpts aired NPR, KPFA, CBC, & Voice of America

"The work itself tells a story...wry and poignant." Wall Street Journal