I, Object!
2008 · The Film Festival: A Theater Festival · The Brick
Is I, Object! a story about three obsessive people and the objects they keep, or a story about objects and the people they keep? The production never settled the question. Instead, it made the shifting relationship between owner and possession into the engine of an ensemble performance.
People, things, and points of view
Created by Cory Einbinder, Kalle Macrides, and Jared Mezzocchi, the piece used ordinary belongings as more than decoration. A kept object can hold memory, demand attention, organize a room, or refuse to leave a life. By reversing the usual grammar—objects keeping people—the production asked who was acting on whom.
The performance mixed live bodies with music, puppetry, animation, and live video. Those forms could shift scale and perspective quickly. An object shown by a camera could fill the stage image. A puppet could behave with more certainty than its keeper. Animation could detach a thing from ordinary weight, while a performer could become part of a collection. The company’s description emphasized surprise and a box-of-tricks quality, but the tricks remained attached to the central question of possession.
Credits
- Cory Einbinder — creator and cast
- Kalle Macrides — creator and cast
- Jared Mezzocchi — creator and cast
- Zak Engel — music
- Sarah Conyers — production management
- Juliana Cope — props, puppets, and costumes
- Brooke Boertzel — cast
- Talaura Harms — cast
- Christiaan Koop — cast
The six-person cast was Brooke Boertzel, Cory Einbinder, Talaura Harms, Christiaan Koop, Kalle Macrides, and Jared Mezzocchi. The compact list reinforces the ensemble design: three creators also performed, and the production’s technical media became partners in the action rather than separate attractions.
At The Brick
I, Object! appeared during The Film Festival: A Theater Festival at The Brick in Williamsburg. The setting is part of the production history only; no ongoing venue relationship is implied. The company presented the work in association with the festival and documented three performances in June 2008.
“...shape-shifting visual feast and fresh surprises emerging in each scene.”
NYTheatre.com
That excerpt describes the changing forms without reducing the piece to spectacle. The company’s own synopsis kept returning to the philosophical joke at its center: if people cannot get rid of their possessions, who is possessed? Music, puppets, animation, and video offered several practical ways to make the question visible.
I, Object! belongs between the public mechanics of R.U.R. and the tightly ruled frame-world of NOIR. See the complete sequence on Projects & Events.
The object as collaborator
The production’s central reversal also describes a practical theater relationship. A prop can decide where a hand must go, how long a crossing takes, or which side of a performer an audience can see. A camera can enlarge one object and diminish another. A puppet requires attention to weight, timing, and gaze. In an ensemble piece about possession, those physical demands become useful dramatic material rather than backstage problems to hide.
The title’s punctuation gives the object a voice before the performance begins. “I” can belong to the person making a claim, while “Object” can be noun, verb, or interruption. The company’s mixture of puppets, live video, animation, music, and belongings kept those meanings mobile. A thing could be evidence, partner, burden, memory, or apparent speaker from one sequence to the next.
The production therefore belongs to the company’s broader interest in visible transformation. Familiar materials remained recognizable even as performance reassigned their scale, agency, and emotional weight. Each change asked the audience to notice both the everyday thing and the theatrical role it had begun to play.