The Provenance of Beauty is a poetic travelogue performed on a bus touring the South Bronx. As we travel the streets of the neighborhood, Rankine's evocative text points out and reflects upon the sites that pass by outside the windows. Views that to an outsider might go by unnoticed - a factory dressed up as townhouses, the theatre where La Lupe held court that is now a church - complicated places that ask what creates a neighborhood in a city in a country in the world.

The audience boards the bus in Spanish Harlem, puts on headphones and for 90 minutes eavesdrops on the voice - both live and recorded - of this historic place. Provenance is an experience that both responds to and redoubles the landscape - its sites, history, present and future - mapping out a poetic cartography of a neighborhood - of any neighborhood - in its eternal state of evolution.

The Provenance of Beauty; A South Bronx Travelogue: written by Claudia Rankine; Created by Melanie Joseph & Claudia Rankine; Directed by Melanie Joseph & Shawn Sides. With Sarah Hayon and recorded performances by Raul Castillo & Randy Danson. Sound by Geoff Abbas; video by Kell Condon; production stage managed by Casey Llewellyn; bus driven by Mary Wallace. Special thanks to free103point9, for transmission and technical support.

ABOUT THE FOUNDRY THEATER

The Foundry Theatre aspires to assemble a community of artists with revolutionary ideas for the theatre. We commission, develop, premiere, and tour plays that invite audiences to visit unexplored landscapes of thought; plays that provoke new questions for our times and compel us to reconsider the impact of theatre on the larger society. In addition to productions and commissions to artists, The Foundry hosts ongoing roundtables, conferences, and town meetings, inviting members of other communities to join us in forging unconventional answers to conventional questions.

There is tremendous vitality in the assembly of individuals who have committed their lives to the theatre, not in service of a "career," but out of a hunger to participate in creating a broader vision - to be part of a progressive community whose ideas, art, and actions would address and challenge what is unacceptable in the status quo. Many who believe in the potency of theatre dare to hope their work will support and invigorate other individuals and communities to do the same. The Foundry is committed to reinvestigating that ideal and, if necessary, to rededicating theatre and the artists who make it to the service of our society.

We are distinctly proud that The Foundry's productions have been critically recognized and honored with eight Obie Awards and three Drama Desk nominations for "Unique Theatrical Experience." In 2000, The Foundry itself received the Ross Wetzsteon Obie Award for its "overall contribution to the Off and Off-Off Broadway community" as a theatre that both "fosters new envelope-pushing work and that engages artists in the thorniest issues of the world we inhabit." And we've been especially encouraged to find growing and diverse audiences hungry for these kinds of unique theatrical experiences - experiences that belong only to the living stage.(http://www.thefoundrytheatre.org)