The players gather at the wings on the edge of the stage, obscured byblack velvet curtains – waiting for a queue “(Silence. By now, everything isdifferent)” read the stage notes. Whatever happens next, they know words are unnecessary to indicate an irreparable shift from the past. It all marches on with or without those who play a part.

Apparatus is pleased to announce (Silence. By now, everything is different), an anniversary exhibition and benefit auction featuring a rogues gallery of friends, lovers, colleagues, and collaborators. The exhibition will be hosted in our gallery space in the Midland Building at 1524 S Western Ave and an auction will be held online through the next four weeks on Artland.

A stage note is what fulfills Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation. The play follows a six-week long community acting class, filled with students who are unsure of themselves, sometimes uninterested in acting or following instructions. It consists solely of dialogues between students and their teacher in the classroom: their exercises, their dramas, their gossip, their love, their follies, their encouragement.

At the end of the six weeks, the students are prompted for one final exercise; to imagine an encounter with their acting partner ten years from this moment. The students begin with an awkwardness, slowly feeling out and imagining the moment to come. Then the stage note: (Silence. By this point, everything is different). following this we begin to realize that the students are no longer students, in the middle of their conversation time has passed 10 years. Their conversation eases into itself and it becomes clear that the encounter has seeped into the real. The imagined stories they told themselves become real, birds chirp, the air is bittersweet.

As the project turns five, we find ourselves at the midway point of Baker’s hypothetical 10 year meeting. It is this midway point of maturation that Apparatus sees its brief life akin to that of a child’s. According to Verywellfamily.com, five-year-olds can recognize rhymes and can answer simple questions, while asking even more. Likewise, according to raisingchildren.net.au, play is the most important way a child develops social and emotional thinking skills. The child’s pretend play is more complicated, full of fantasy and drama.

We can say that we see no difference between the cognitive development of a five-year-old child and a five year old Apparatus, asking too many questions, and only ever answering the simple ones, because ultimately those tend to be the most interesting.

Special thanks to: Antonio Lopez, David Sprecher, Devin T. Mays, Elena Ailes, Em Davenport, Holly Murkerson, Isabelle Francis McGuire, Leah Ke Yi Zhang, Luna Ghisetti, Maggie Crowley, Neal Vandenbergh, Robert Zant, Shir Ende, Thomas Huston, Tim Mann, Will Krauland, Max Guy, Dylan Spasky, Robert Chase Heishman, Katherine Simone Reynolds, Rachael Bos, Peter Anastos, Noël Marical