An enormous table sits in the middle of the stage. Dozens of audience members seated around the periphery await the proceedings with semi-nervous chatter. As lights dim, creator and performer Geoff Sobelle enters, clad in the traditional garb of a waiter. The next hour and a half will be filled with stories, magic tricks, self-reflection, and the subject of the night’s affair: food.
This isn’t Sobelle’s first excursion into immersive theatre. He has devoted entire projects to things and our accumulation of them, as well as the concept of home. With FOOD he has possibly the most elementary of ingredients needed for life.
“It’s something that is so basic – you must eat or you will die – to the highest cultural echelon,” Sobelle tells the Chronicle. “And it’s holy. It’s both holy and profane.”
“It asks, too, ‘What is food?’ The show is not called DINNER. It’s called FOOD, which I kind of love because the most basic way of talking about food is that the word food is not just cuisine or something that you get at a restaurant.”
In FOOD, the table itself is large not just in size but in import.
“The idea of sitting at the table means you’re also sitting with other people at that table,” Sobelle explains, “and that’s hard to escape, that way of looking at one another and being there, present at a kind of meal. And that’s important. That’s a valuable way of being together, because you’re sort of there at a performance, and you’re sort of there, kind of in a restaurant, and then we can kind of riff on what that might mean to all. Be seated, like you all have your place at the table, which also means that you all have your place at the table like you’re not just an onlooker. You’re in some way a participant, and you are not excused.”
While this piece originated in a city of great food, it has made its way outside of New York City, with performances in Scotland, Nashville, and now Austin, where FOOD will have its Texas premiere as part of a partnership between Fusebox and Texas Performing Arts.
“I myself have never been to Austin,” Sobelle said, “so I don’t really know what to expect. I haven’t the slightest idea. What’s cool is that each of these places is radically different. It’s not a vibe or a feel that I could even name, just something that really feels different, place to place. The laughter is different. The silence is different. It’s just different.”
Being a product of the theatre, Sobelle can’t help but quote Shakespeare, a playwright who ostensibly discussed everything under the sun.
“There’s that awesome thing of Hamlet right where he says,’Where’s Polonius? He’s at supper. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.’ That we will also provide food from our matter. We will at some point go back into the earth.”
What big ideas will come out of these performances of FOOD? Only time, and the audience, will tell.
FOOD runs Feb. 1-4 at McCullough Theatre (2375 Robert Dedman Dr.). fuseboxlive.com/project/food.
This article appears in January 26 • 2024.