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Torn Space: All the City's a Stage

Melissa Meola and Dan Shanahan, co-founders of Torn Space Theatre, at the Dnipro building.
(photo: Rose Mattrey)

Most times, an actress or an actor is the star of the show. Sometimes a visionary director or a genius composer is the main attraction. Once in a rare while, a production element—a runaway chandelier, a getaway helicopter or a breakaway gown—deserves above-the-title billing.

In the case of Architect, Torn Space Theatre’s latest, it is the building where the show is performed that takes primary attention. Since the setting for this show, the final part of writer and director Dan Shanahan’s Muriel Vanderbilt trilogy, is as much a character as those performed by the actors, Shanahan sought a venue with star quality.

Shanahan’s site-specific performances have always relied upon cunning use of venues. The first segment, Muriel Vanderbilt Goes Walking, was performed in the sculpture court of the Albright-Knox Gallery. Last year’s show, Terminus, had crowds of theatergoers checking their maps to locate the Central Terminal, the glorious old train station that has been rsurrected as an event and performance venue ater almost thirty years of inactivity. The star of Architect is 562 Genesee Street, and a visit to the star was in order prior to the opening of the show.

Heading out Genesee Street from downtown, shiny, new Buffalo gives way to dusty, neglected Buffalo, like flipping through a stack of pictures from “after” to “before.” Crumbling buildings crop up like broken teeth, the neighborhood looking as if it has been punched in the mouth.

"Architect" is the last installment in Shanahan's Muriel Vanderbilt trilogy.
(photo: Lukia Costello)

That the worst urban decay has been leveled to the ground suggests community hygiene and something civic waiting to happen. Still, it is hard to believe that Genesee Street was once vital to Buffalo’s nightlife. Tangarra, the much beloved and recently deceased drag artiste, used to tell me that Genesee once stretched out, from city center to city line, like an arm covered in sparkling bangles. The glitter was the neon marking all the bars, clubs, dance halls, theaters and restaurants that thrived for much of the 20th century.

The original buildings that survive in and around Genesee Street are beefy, brick structures, built as if to last forever. So far, they have. At 562, the three-story structure looks desolate from the outside but inside it is thriving. This building will be particularly active for the run of Architect through the middle of this month.

Architect is an apt title, reflecting the remarkable building in which we find ourselves as well as the inner life of the play’s central character. Harold, Muriel Vanderbilt’s husband, is determined to create his own moral code, despite the pulls of instinct and nature, establishing his own rituals, symbols and icons.

This building’s distinctive history might have been authored by Shanahan or some other imaginative mind. In this case, fact is at least as vivid as fiction. The building was constructed as a German social hall. Evidence of this is the beer hall in the lowest level of the building. The vaulted ceilings of this room hearken to another time and place.

In the 1930s, according to playwright Manny Fried, whose family lived in Genesee-Jefferson neighborhood since the 1910s, the building was home to activities of a regional bund. In fact, the Deutsch-Amerikanischer Volksbund under the guidance of Munich-born Fritz Kuhn was established in May 1936 in Buffalo. Kuhn, after leading American Nazi rallies in other large American cities, was indicted on embezzling funds from US Nazi organizations.

(photo: Lukia Costello)

After the war the building became home to the Ukrainian Cultural Center, also known as the Dnipro. The interiors were repainted in Russian styles and the library’s literature and displays are vehemently anti-totalitarian, both anti-Nazi and anti-Communist. You should try to glimpse the ballroom fully illuminated, which you will not see during Architect courtesy of Torn Space co-founder Melissa Meola’s moody lighting for the show. Seen in non-theatrical illumination, the ballroom looks like a traditional Easter egg of Slavic design scaled to epic proportions. It renders flowers and humans into a unique, symbolic iconography, hence the appropriateness to the play’s themes.

When asked about the future of additional plays written about and set in Buffalo’s distinctive buildings, Shanahan keeps his prospects close to the vest. However, he will allow that Torn Space productions will continue through the year in the Adam Mickiewicz Dramatic Circle & Library, at 612 Fillmore Avenue. However, he considers the site-specific shows the company trademark and will present them each summer as he finds appropriate, interesting spaces.

Considering the riches the local cityscape has to offer, it is easy to imagine Shanahan being busy for many summers to come. It also might behoove any one of the region’s economic development agencies to put Shanahan and Torn Space on a payroll. Doing so would subsidize the intriguing work by the otherwise self-supporting company. Doing so would also charge an artistic imagination with finding distinctive use for classic buildings in underappreciated neighborhoods. Besides, wouldn’t it be great to give an artist a municipal title like: Dan Shanahan, Commissioner of Really Cool Neighborhood Revitalization.

Architect continues performances at the Dnipro Building (the Ukrainian Cultural Center), 562 Genesee Street near Jefferson. Showtime is 9pm, August 10 & 11, 17 & 18. For information contact 812-5733 or tornspace@hotmail.com.

Please note: Performance is on the second floor and the rathskellar is in the basement of the Dnipro Building. There are no elevators, staircase access only.