\n<\/p>\n
What makes a house a home? And what constitutes an American home? Planted dead center on the stage in \u201cThis House Is Not a Home,\u201d a slippery, ever-shifting work by Nile Harris, is a house \u2014 a bounce house. But it\u2019s more than an inflatable plaything.<\/p>\n
It is at the heart of a web of ideas that touch on national politics, arts funding and a local New York scene \u2014 the tiny slice of Lower Manhattan known as Dimes Square. You get a sense of where Harris stands on that bit of geography: In \u201cThis House,\u201d there is a fight. Over a vape.<\/p>\n
Beginning Saturday as part of the Under the Radar festival, \u201cThis House\u201d \u2014 sad and boisterous, dark yet at times blisteringly funny \u2014 will be reprised at Abrons Arts Center<\/a>, where it was first presented with Ping Chong and Company last summer. (Harris is a member of Ping Chong\u2019s artistic leadership team.)<\/p>\n A provocative look at politics and race, \u201cThis House\u201d is a critique of the American experience that explores the intersections of modern-day liberalism, the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and well-meaning nonprofit arts institutions. It gets raucous. Will the bounce house survive this insurrection? <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The idea for what became the work began in the summer of 2020 when Harris, 28, and his friend, the interdisciplinary artist Trevor Bazile, started to fantasize about a bounce house. It reminded them of the Capitol Building, Harris said, but it could also represent any institution \u2014 and then morph back into \u201ca preadolescent meme.\u201d<\/p>\n Harris started to envision a series of happenings that might incorporate a bounce house: \u201cShould we pull up to a George Floyd protest with a bounce castle,\u201d he said of one idea, \u201cand have people jump for Black lives?\u201d<\/p>\n The bounce house idea was placed on the back burner until 2021, when Bazile became the director of New People\u2019s Cinema Club, a New York film festival funded in part by the venture capitalist Peter Thiel<\/a>, a financial supporter<\/a> of Trump-aligned candidates. \u201cTrevor had a very clear point of view around, like, it doesn\u2019t matter the hand that feeds you \u2014 it\u2019s all bad,\u201d Harris recalled. \u201cThere\u2019s no clean money.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWith this Peter Thiel money,\u201d he added, \u201cwe bought a bounce castle because that was on our forever list to do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As part of the film festival that year, Harris and Bazile hosted a party featuring a bounce house in a Dimes Square loft. But just two days after the festival closed, Bazile, who was 25, died suddenly. (Harris declined to specify a cause.) While \u201cThis House\u201d is a running commentary \u2014 sonic, spoken, choreographic \u2014 on many subjects, it is, at its core, a meditation on grief.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s also an extension of a manifesto, released by Harris and Bazile as a Google document, about a fictional board meeting. The manifesto, a labyrinth of hyperlinks, poses questions like: \u201cDo you like Black voices or just the voices that say what you want to hear?\u201d \u201cWill you wear your Telfar bag to the race war?\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout \u201cThis House,\u201d Harris appears in disguises, including Woody from \u201cToy Story\u201d and a gingerbread minstrel character he calls Timmy, whose face is fixed in a smile. \u201cMaybe there\u2019s some comment there about Blackness and Black life, but it\u2019s a smiling face,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s approachable.\u201d<\/p>\n Dyer Rhoads, the production\u2019s dramaturg and set designer,<\/a> has created a vibrant set that brings to life a universe of primary colors, where paintings, plastic and, of course, the bounce house, function as a larger-than-life diorama. But because \u201cThis House\u201d reacts to the events of the moment, it will not be the same show it was last summer.<\/p>\n \u201cI always say it\u2019s 60 percent set and 40 percent improvised,\u201d Harris said of the show, which is informed by world events and uses improvisation, including audience interactions. \u201cIt responds to current affairs, it responds to the conditions that it\u2019s put in. And we are in a very different state in the world than we were six months ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Improvisation means everything to Harris, who added, \u201cHow I understand being a moving and performing body is responding to what is presently happening in the room.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThis House\u201d features the performance artist Crackhead Barney<\/a> employing her daring crowd work; and the dancer Malcolm-x Betts,<\/a> whose unfurling, out-of-body improvisations lend a vivid vulnerability to an increasingly fractious stage world. To Harris, the work is a play. But the \u201cthe play,\u201d he said, \u201cis<\/em> the people. The play is about me, Malcolm and Barney and our thoughts on the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Harris, born and raised in Miami, was a serious theater student growing up. He attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, along with Rhoads, and graduated with a B.F.A. in acting. \u201cI\u2019m an actor for better or worse,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I am.\u201d<\/p>\n