A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN Duenyas scopes
out his ad-hoc venue.

Photo: Jonathan T. Clem

Yehuda Duenyas has a weird interpretation of “taking it easy.” Last year, he received a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) grant only days before learning he was going to be a father. Thinking ahead, he decided to make his commissioned piece low maintenance. So Duenyas, 33, a director beloved in experimental circles for his National Theater of the United States, took a step back. He reasoned that if he invited 100 other artists to participate, he could relax as the stage manager. The result, though, is a stunningly ambitious site-specific extravaganza, One Million Forgotten Moments, which seems far needier than any newborn.

As part of the Council’s Art and Recovery Program, empty spaces waiting for renovation have been designated as temporary performance venues. Duenyas chose a defunct record store, which features a particularly scarifying dropped ceiling and linoleum floor. Working with designer-artist Brett Windham—who dresses windows for Bergdorf Goodman at her day job—he is transforming the ex–CD store into a plush, velvet-lined jewel box of a theater. Instead of looking inward, seats will face out the window and onto the street. Dance, theater and film projections are slated to take place on the sidewalk, in the median or on the surface of trucks driving by.

Apart from a few rules—obeying city laws, respecting other artists—Duenyas’s invitees have carte blanche. More than 30 companies are taking part, and events will range from guerrilla actions, in which performers blend in with pedestrians, to Busby Berkeley–style grandiosity. The Brick’s Jeff Lewonczyk (a TONY contributor), for instance, will choreograph a girl-gang fight with participants in full ’80s regalia. Among dozens of others, experimental rabble-rousers Radiohole and actor-illusionist Steve Cuiffo, as well as a helpful local historian (“George Washington actually walked here!”), will compete for the audience’s leftover attention.

Duenyas, sitting in the gutted store, has been navigating a maze of permits and insurance policies, but he says the city has been enormously cooperative. When he described the project to a member of the mayor’s office (“You know, people will be dancing”), the civil servant busted a wiggly move right there on the sidewalk. “I asked him to be in the show immediately,” says Duenyas. “I’m still hoping he’ll show up.”

Clearly, everyone wants to contribute to this urban valentine, which opens Tuesday 11; the venue, at 38 Park Row, sits around the corner from the former World Trade Center. For Duenyas, the impetus hits even closer to home. “I’ll be introducing my daughter—possibly in a baby parade, complete with top hats and mustaches,” the proud papa says. “She is one of the newest New Yorkers…and this show is for them.”

One Million Forgotten Moments is playing at 38 Park Row through Sept 16.