peace bridge: mixed media works by Melora Griffis

Inside theatre home there is an enormous basement room for fencing class, rehearsal, a pre-theatre audience meal, and where she has a birthday party.  She get to invite the entire second grade and when Dean, her special friend arrives, he is standing at the top of the stairs beside his mother holding a giant neon green polka dot hippopotamus with a bow around it.  His present is bigger than she is.  The stuffed animal's size represents something important between her and Dean Delarosso whose parents own a pizza parlor.  Way in the back of the underground world, outside of the multipurpose studio is a tiny kitchen where her mother makes lasagna and salad for all the people who paid for dinner before the show.  There are several refrigerators lining the walls of the halls and beyond are dressing rooms with costume racks packed with clothing.  There is a faint smell of wet stones in the atmosphere.  The furthest room from the door to the street in the rear of the basement is directly under the theatre and has a cavernous ceiling which is also the floor of the stage above.  Backstage isn't a place to play, it is where the actors prepare to go ON stage - to be IN the play.  A trap door with a ladder is visible where a witch can climb down while melting.  She has privileged information about the make believe.  The secrets of the play make it real!  Two flights up to the top of the building behind the light booths another huge open room with a spare elevated stage at one end.  Her parents sleep up there behind a red velvet curtain.   She has to be very quiet, and make sure no one seems or hears her when inside the light booth where she looks down on the actors.  Someone (maybe her father) has the serious job of running the lights and sound.  It is completely dark except for one tiny glint over his clip and dimmer boards, otherwise it is pitch black so that the once dark stage is now all that is illuminated.

-Melora Griffis,  July 2021