Taking Craigslist to the stage

You can find just about anything on Craigslist.org.

Among the 110,000 ads posted daily on the high-traffic, low-cost online bulletin board, you may find anything from a New York voter seeking a 'Bush supporter for fair, physical fight,' to a conjoined twin seeking a party date.

Like most Web sites, the Craigslist community has remained confined to cyberspace. But now, it is becoming a physical, improbable reality - at the Kimmel Center.

Tomorrow night, the Program Board's Performing Arts Committee will present 'An Evening with Craig's List,' an experimental variety show featuring a sampling of 22 performers and speakers chartered through the Web site.

Committee members Stephen Lichty, Zaq Landsberg and Colin Atrophy, all students, solicited performers for the show, putting up more than two dozen ads on Craigslist for everything from a motivational speaker to a dominatrix. The performers will improvise 10-minute segments on stage, so organizers aren't exactly sure what will happen.

But any twists and turns in the show will be recorded. A notary responded to an ad the committee posted - and he will notarize a typed transcript of the night, said Landsberg, a Steinhardt sophomore.

Lichty, a CAS junior and the committee chair, said he was most concerned with getting legitimate responses. Consequently, the committee kept its ads, which it started sending out in early November, simple and direct.

A self-proclaimed 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' expert responded quickly to a posting calling for someone who could talk about the show, Landsberg said.

Within days of posting the ads, they received more than 100 bites from other potential performers, including an inordinate number of resumes and headshots from local motivational speakers, Landsberg said.

Writing the ads, the trio hoped to attract cream-of-the-crop performers, but Atrophy, a Gallatin junior, said credentials weren't always the top priority in their selection process.

For example, they selected a storyteller who didn't have any professional 'storytelling' experience, but who said he had a lot of practice telling tales to his kids in a range of funny voices, Atrophy said.

'We're not looking for someone who's completely polished and an awesome, first-tier storyteller,' Atrophy said. 'We want to help the second-stringers and bring them up to the top.'

Meaning, of course, 'An Evening With Craig's List.'

While some postings went up purely for the organizers' own amusement and have gone unanswered - such as a request for pop star Moby - others garnered unanticipated responses. Atrophy said he never expected his call for a performing notary to be answered.

Yet authorized notary Mark Fallon replied, saying he'd be up for the challenge.

While he doesn't know the specifics of the event, Fallon said he knows his job, as usual, will be to make any documents produced official. Fallon said he'll bring his stamper and crimper tomorrow night, tools he's used for years.

'[But] never on stage with a lot of people watching,' he said.

While the actual content of 'An Evening With Craig's List' will be left largely to chance, the committee has some set elements.

A videotaped interview with Craig Newmark, the soft-spoken founder of Craigslist, will play at the back of the stage, while two more video monitors display the ads and e-mail correspondence, including the headshots and resumes, that performers sent to the committee.

The bulk of the show, however, will feature participants taking the stage in random pairs or groups, after professional model America Harris draws names from a tumbling Bingo cage.

Having the performers - who will meet for the first time on stage - collaborate is a key part of the show, Atrophy said.

'It forces them to put everything on the table,' he said. 'They have to give everything, and they don't know what they're going to get back from their collaborator.'

Landsberg and Atrophy will emcee the event, so if a particular duo doesn't work out, they can hustle a fresh act on in its place.

'We'll just throw another element in,' Landsberg said. 'It could be like, 'Mime! Go out there and save this!''

The prospect of theatrical disaster amused Lichty more than it concerned him.

'I think it could get very ugly very fast,' he said.

Regardless of what happens, the show will be a success, Landsberg said.

'Our [show] is less about appealing to an audience, and more about pushing the boundaries of what a performance is,' he said.

Looking back on the planning process, Atrophy said it has been 'very intuitive,' with the three committee members sharing similar objectives.

'The more we worked on it, and the more we talked it out, the more abstract ideas seemed to be hovering around,' he said. 'Rather than saying, 'Let's make this idea a reality,' we said, 'Let's take this reality and pull all the ideas we can out of it.''

While Lichty, Atrophy and Landsberg all said they expect to sell out, they anticipate other rewards from the culmination of their work.
Lichty said he sees it as an opportunity to 'integrate arts with the real world.'

'If nothing else,' he said, 'we'll have a great time with some interesting people.'

'An Evening With Craig's List' shows at 8 p.m. tomorrow at the Kimmel Center's Shorin Performance Studio. Tickets are available at Ticket Central for $3 with an NYUCard and $5 without. For more information, call 212.998.4987.