Even though Honor was not produced by The Wooster Group, the production answered an age-old question for my fellow Wooster faithful:

The Performing Garage can accommodate chairs?! 

For the entire duration of my Woostergoing career, I’ve wondered if this landmark space simply couldn’t house actual seats…or if the backless benches have been a deliberate choice all along, true to the company’s ethos of berating its flock with the steepest of challenges. 

And Honor may have solved this query for me:

Discomfort is the name of Wooster’s game, be it a physical challenge or artistic challenges. 

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When the same production transfers to a new theater, audiences assume the changes will be minimal. 

Usually, the transition requires little more than scaling the staging to the shape of the new stage. 

But Honor’s move from NYU Skirball to The Performing Garage fundamentally altered the production’s central means of expression: the spoken interplay between Suzanne Bocanegra and Lili Taylor. 

At NYU, the audience sat too far away from the two to hear Bocanegra’s speech, except in a distant whisper during Taylor’s pauses.

But inside The Performing Garage, the seats feel smack in between the two, as we listen to the words pass from Bocanegras’ mouth and out of Taylor’s mouth. 

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Can a New York theater produce a tableau vivant?

Please and thanks.

Oh, and the company most likely to do so?

Prepare to squirm in those backless benches while the performers remain stock-still!