Elegy for a Vacant Lot, an adventurous work of movement theater, combines scored and real-time sports forms, riffing on sport as both a kind of dance and a mode of true collective improvisation. A play-by-play radio broadcast gives rise to the voice of a poet, who, out of the state of collective play finds first a language for collective memory, and then a singular, intensely intimate voice, equal parts joy and pain. Elegy positions itself at the intersection of disciplines, influenced as much by the playfulness of jazz improvisation as it is by theater or dance; dispensing with theater's fixed notion of 'character,' the performers play the piece like a sport. With text freed from the burdens of linear narrative, Elegy celebrates the pleasure of language for its own sake, seeking out a sense of meaning closer to music than to story. The work's state of play is rooted in a fluidity of roles--as one player becomes another--and forms--radio play-by-play becoming poetry, dance becoming sport.

Judith M. Smith founded the New York City-based producing entity Mile of String (named after the Duchamp installation) in 2005 to investigate adventurous performance forms, drawing from theater, dance, sport, and architecture, among other disciplines. Her first two full-length works, Right After and No Where Can Be Here Now, premiered at The Chocolate Factory Theater in 2006 and 2008, respectively. Her original short pieces, bird food, yes i said yes, and Buildings are for Eating, were presented by the Movement Research at the Judson Church series, Dixon Place, and chashama's Site-Specific Sundays series, respectively. Before relocating to New York, Smith co-founded Silo Theatre Company in Los Angeles, which produced poet-playwrights and masters of the avant-garde in 'found' spaces. Smith directed and designed movement-based, site-specific productions of Sarah Kane's Crave (one of the first productions of a Kane play in the States and L.A. Weekly Pick of the Week), Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi, and Mac Wellman's Hypatia; or the Divine Algebra (Backstage West Critic's Pick), Whirligig and Sincerity Forever.