This weekend, a new kind of art inhabited the space of the Rose Art Museum: living, breathing theater. The Free Play Theatre Cooperative's production of Jos Rivera's Marisol used everything in the museum in the most unconventional ways. Whether it was an actor walking in the downstairs gallery's pool or angel wings thrown over a balcony or the audience seated on wood and canvas gallery seats, there was an air of intimacy with the museum throughout the unusual performance.

The script itself provided a unique atmosphere. Marisol (Jennifer Corrales '08) is barely surviving her rough life in the Bronx when she is visited by her guardian angel (G. Athena Ariana Oliver-Osbourne '10). The angel tells her that a war, a preamble to the apocalypse, is being mounted in heaven against an uncaring God; Marisol must now live without protection. After another woman named Marisol is killed on the protagonist's street, strange events occur. In the second act, the cast is transported to an alternate universe in which Marisol's reality meets a surreal twist: the Empire State Building faces the wrong direction, for example, and Marisol's friend's creepy brother Lenny (Alex Fleming '09) is pregnant with her baby.

Engaging performances by the actors deeply involved the audience, particularly Corrales' Marisol, whose strong facial and vocal expressions allowed the audience to feel as if she could be one's closest friend. Director Jennifer El-Far '07 also deserves credit for her innovative staging of the already-bizarre play and her efforts to inspire audience participation.

Several "Secret Service men" prompted the audience to move its gallery-provided seats to four different places. El-Far sat in the audience, occasionally instructing viewers when they were supposed to take action, making the group feel like a community rather than removed spectators. During a particularly loud scene, noisemakers were distributed so that everyone could share in the chaos. The sheer fun of blowing a noisemaker as if it was New Year's Eve drew even the least participatory audience members into the show.

Three actors busied themselves creating New York's slums by begging for money and handing out leaflets about accepting Jesus before the apocalypse, bringing the poorest part of New York's gritty atmosphere directly to the audience. They approached audience members midshow, eliciting a variety of reactions-some of them disarming.

Although Marisol successfully innovated in an unconventional theater space, the Rose did present some challenges. Because of columns and open areas in the middle of the top floor, visibility was often impaired, and actors weren't always able to face optimal direction. If the staging of the action had been shifted slightly to one side or the other, perhaps this could have been improved. The sound also came in too loud or soft at times, but Samson Kohanksi '08, lighting and sound designer and operator, was working with a boom box as opposed to a professional sound board.

Despite these minor problems, El-Far could teach other directors a few things about making unorthodox utilization of space. Indeed, as El-Far said in her opening remarks, "We have claimed this space in the name of performance art.