The Theater Maker Who Just Wants to Keep Going Smaller
Designer and visual artist Dan Daly re-centers "The Story Of Lot's Wife" as a performer-less experience for one audience member
Three years ago, Dan Daly had me pouring my heart out to a tree.
My first exposure to this versatile scenic designer and visual artist’s work was Arborlogues: A Botanical Recital Performed for One Tree, a piece that Daly “staged” around a cedar tree in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, in summer 2021.
For the performer-less piece, Daly enclosed the tree with a red curtain. One audience member at a time received a script, stepped inside the curtain, and delivered a monologue to the tree.
Sounds silly, perhaps. But when the moving text (by Lee LeBreton) encouraged me to recall a precious memory from the past year involving a tree, an answer came to me immediately. I spoke about visiting Barry the Barred Owl, a beloved Central Park fixture who had recently died. I told the tree how much Barry had meant to me, and that I was very sad about Barry’s death.
Suddenly I was, to my surprise, speaking as I might to a very old friend.
Daly is looking to cast a similar spell with his new performer-less installation The Story of Lot’s Wife, now at Nancy Manocherian’s the cell theatre through August 25.
“It’s all about you – what you’re open to, and what you end up wanting out of the piece,” said Daly. “Some people will run through it and think nothing of it, and then there’s people who are going to have a real change happen to them.”
Daly’s design credits include Tammany Hall at Soho Playhouse and the upcoming Vile Isle at The Tank. A resident artist at the cell, he also teaches scenic design at SUNY New Paltz. But his personal passion lies in these strange, unclassifiable projects that use design to craft an emotional journey.
The story of Lot’s wife is found in Genesis 19. Her tale is tied to the ruin of Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities destroyed by God as punishment for rampant sin. Lot, nephew to Abraham, is rescued from Sodom by two angels. As they escape, his family is instructed not to look back. But Lot’s wife turns to witness Sodom in flames, and becomes a pillar of salt as punishment for disobeying the angels’ warnings.
Daly grew fascinated with the figure of Lot’s wife — all the more so because she is never granted the dignity of an actual name. He also drew on her connection to Sodom, its name now the source of an anti-gay slur despite - in Daly’s reading - limited mention of homosexuality amongst the city’s supposed sins (theological debate is ongoing on the question). The installation re-centers Lot’s Wife as a standing relic containing the historical trauma of the Sodomites, with Daly drawing a line from Sodom to present day queer liberation.
“The idea that she becomes salt, which is something that preserves, something that holds memory – she turns around, sees a community she loves being destroyed, and protects that memory,” Daly said.
Lot’s Wife guides a single audience member through a series of shrines placed along a circular path lined by blue-velvet curtains. Daly’s text explains the significance of each object – a decanter filled with water from San Francisco Bay, a crumpled bar napkin from Stonewall Inn — and suggests a modest ritual tied to each shrine.
“I can’t get an actual piece of Lot’s Wife, if she even existed,” said Daly. “But I can get a piece of our history in San Francisco, I can get a piece of our history at Stonewall – physical objects which carry a lot of weight and memory with them.”
Each audience member is guided towards setting down some trauma or painful memory for Lot’s Wife to watch over – not forgetting that pain, but leaving its weight here amid the salt so they might, as the text reads, “Preserve and persevere.”
“You needed to go through that thing to become who you are,” said Daly. “But you don’t need to always think about it.”
Daly spent years as a freelance scenic designer before the pandemic shutdown, taking on as many projects as he could to pay rent. In 2019, he designed 27 shows. It was “exciting and fun,” but left little room for days off – let alone time to craft projects like Lot’s Wife.
He then moved into teaching, steady work that has allowed him the time and space to consider projects that “don’t fit in the mold of what we’re told theater is.” This year he formed his own company, Other Forms Of Theatre (OFO for short) to collect these unconventional works under a single umbrella.
Another of Daly’s atypical creations is Pocket Change, a toy theater piece that can be performed anywhere using quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. A small cardboard theater (dubbed “Lin-coin Cent-er”) is mailed to ticket buyers, accompanied by a booklet of short plays with accompanying backdrops.
“Many people, as they progress in their theater career, want to make bigger and bigger things; I just want to keep going smaller,” Daly said with a laugh.
Easily constructed at home, Pocket Change again puts the experience entirely into an audience member’s hands. There are 11 plays. A favorite of mine is John Michael Diresta’s Portland, in which a struggling filmmaker’s “Quarter” and “Nickel” commiserate on the failed promise of Portland’s artistic scene.
Daly was not there to watch me play out this scene. Nor can he observe audience members as they experience Arborlogues or Lot’s Wife. As he has chosen to imbue that pillar of salt outside Sodom with a meaning that resonates for him, so an individual passing through Daly’s works can grant them as much or as little power as feels truthful to them.
At the halfway point of Lot’s Wife, Daly has placed an empty plinth. The text gently requests, “Mentally place the name of someone who has supported you through times of pain; times of growth; times of happiness; times of bliss.”
Walking in, I would not have predicted the name that came to mind. But Daly’s work had nudged my brain, ever so slightly, towards a broader frame of understanding.