BACK TO THE WORK: ENCOUNTERS WITH HISTORICAL & CONTEMPORARY VOICES at Strange Attractor Theatre

Strange Attractor Theatre in collaboration with Lippitt House Museum will present Back to the Work: Encounters with Historical & Contemporary Voices at Lippitt House Museum in Providence Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons from March 4 to April 29, 2018. Through an experience that is part historic house tour-part interactive installation performance, Back to the Work explores the theme of labor in order to illuminate the human effort and expertise that exists in the clothes we wear, the houses we live in, and the objects that surround us.

Jed Hancock-Brainerd and Rebecca Noon, founding members of Strange Attractor, have been producing a wide variety of theatre pieces in Rhode Island for the past eight years. Though this is their first collaboration with Lippitt House Museum, it is not their first time using investigative research to build interactive performance.

"We like to take audiences on imaginative journeys that start from a place of historical truth," says Hancock-Brainerd. "The stories that exist all around us are incredible, and having the opportunity to investigate the stories that Lippitt House holds -- both from today and 150 years ago -- has let me see it in a whole new way. It's been grounding."

According to Noon, "When Lippitt House Museum approached us last year, we knew we had to say yes. Having the chance to shift the focus from the person who commissioned the house and lived in it, to the people who literally built it and keep it running today has been an exciting endeavor for us as artists."

Artists Andy Russ (Sound Designer, Sans Everything) and Emily Shapiro (Beach Designer, The Sea Pageant) are creating the multimedia components and staging the rooms for this multi-sensory installation.

Lippitt House Museum was first opened as a private home in 1865. Built for Henry Lippitt, 33rd Governor of Rhode Island and owner of several textile mills in Rhode Island, the family maintained it as a private residence until the late 1970's, and it was opened as a museum in the 1993 under Preserve Rhode Island.

"There's a lot of scholarship and interest today around the people who cleaned, cooked, painted, as well as those who labored in the early days of US manufacturing," says Noon. "But those stories are sadly hard to find because people didn't think it was important to collect them. As part of this project we're also illuminating the stories of the people working in Lippitt House Museum today. If we don't collect the stories of people in 2018, how can they be told 150 years from now?"

Back to the Work runs Tuesdays at 7pm and Sundays at 2pm from March 4-April 29. There is no cost to attend, but reservations are encouraged due to limited capacity, and can be made at http://www.preserveri.org/lippitt-house-museum.

Back to the Work is supported by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, an independent state-affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Council seeds, supports, and strengthens public history, cultural heritage, civic education, and community engagement by and for all Rhode Islanders.

For more information, visit the STRANGE ATTRACTOR THEATRE website at www.strangeattractor.org.

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