“The real and authentic version of people never stands still—it’s always impacted by time—we’re using the truth of these people’s lives and their experiences as a mean to mark how and what the impact of time is on us, individually and collectively.” Team Sunshine Performance Corporation

“This memorable collection of heart-to-hearts, sublime movements, and ever-evolving competitions is one you need to see to believe. For real.” L. Haber, Phindie

Photos by Jen Cleary

Real life inside of the theater.

The second iteration of an audacious 24-year performance experiment captures the passage of time and its impact on the bodies and psyches of a group of individuals. Every two years, the same seven-person ensemble reassembles, engaging in a long-term process of creating and recreating a presentation of performance art, physical theater, music, ritual, and dance.  Together they piece a quilt of their real lives, memories, predictions, ultimately celebrating the achievement of the unknown dream, or mourning the loss of an unrealized future.  With the audience seated onstage, facing the empty seats of the theater, an intimate encounter occurs in a vast space. The Sincerity Project is a true combination of life and art, an encounter with all that is beautiful and terrifying, funny and sublime.

Director Alex Torra Performers and Creators Aram Aghazarian, Benjamin Camp, Rachel Camp, Makoto Hirano, Jenna Horton, Melissa Krodman, Mark McCloughan

Festival Co-Producer
Shelley Green and Michael Golden

$15–$38 (sliding scale)

Festival Co-Producers
Shelley Green and Michael Golden

About Team Sunshine Performance Corporation

Founded in 2010, Team Sunshine Performance Corporation creates Planet Earth’s finest performance works and interactive community-gathering events. Ranging from theatrical duets to massive, outdoor spectacles, the company’s eclectic body of work blends the social with the artistic, creating opportunities for people to come together and revel in the pleasures and difficulties of our collective contemporary experience.

Interview with Team Sunshine Performance Corporation

The following responses were collectively given by Alex Torra, Makoto Hirano, and Benjamin Camp of Team Sunshine Performance Corporation.

FringeArts: What is the premise behind The Sincerity Project?

Team Sunshine Performance Corporation: The premise of The Sincerity Project (TSP) is that Team Sunshine Performance will gather the same ensemble together every two years for 24 years to create a new installment of TSP. The theatrical space at TSP becomes a space of check-in, a sign-post, mile marker, a moment to feel deeply present with a much larger life. It’s an opportunity to look at the present and future and past through the lens we are providing.

FringeArts: Now that you have embarked on the actual project part of it, how do you think of the show?

TSPC: We think of it as a performative experiment and sometimes as a performative dare, to see whether a specific ensemble can create an iterative autobiographical authenticity over an unusual scale. The premise, when we started, was about putting on stage an authentic moment, but the real and authentic version of people never stands still—it’s always impacted by time—we’re using the truth of these people’s lives and their experiences as a mean to mark how and what the impact of time is on us, individually and collectively. And that impact is both beautiful and also terrifying and painful. We are molding the theatrical space, therefore, into a place where we get to sit with that impact, to feels its presence, to shudder at its ugliness, to know that hope and pessimism are two sides of the same coin.

FringeArts: How did this particular group come together for The Sincerity Project?

TSPC: We invited people who we thought had access to a certain type of creativity and passion, people we were excited to be in the room with. We instinctively looked for people who had different artistic instincts but had a facility with making their own work as devisers. Ultimately, we found performers who were comfortable not playing characters, who were willing to explore being themselves. Early explorations of the piece were about putting the real them on stage, not just how they think or see themselves, but their relationships to the people on stage and off. We were looking for ways to make their bodies really present on stage—taking inspiration from the work of performance artists we loved—and we’re trying to figure out how to find ways to track the way these real bodies change and shift over time. We also discussed how the piece could allow us and the audience to plot ourselves/themselves on one’s own timeline.

FA: What’s the staging?

TSPC: The audience will be set up onstage, facing the empty seats of the theater. Which allows us to literally be close and involved. We wanted to do this next installment in a theater again because something felt right to be back in a traditional theater but to NOT do a play. It is a series of actions and rituals about the real lives of the people who are performance artists, it taps the notion of life and art in the same space. It’s real life inside of the theater.