Ira S. Murfin's "An Interview"
Ira S. Murfin’s An Interview
An Interview is an ongoing, linear, itinerant performance, consisting of a series of interlocking one-hour segments, each built around a unique encounter between ever-rotating pairs of participants, one of whom is returning from the previous segment, the other newly arriving. Each segment is comprised of two halves: a reading of the transcript of an interview the returning participant conducted with the previous participant during the prior segment, and a new interview, in which the new participant interviews the returning participant. That interview is then transcribed to be read in the next segment, when the interviewer returns to be interviewed by a new participant, an interview that will then be revisited in the following segment, and so on.
Since it was first initiated in 2016, dozens of people have participated in An Interview at the Chicago Cultural Center, Rhinoceros Theatre Festival, the BeauTown Cabaret, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Tritriangle, and in various living rooms and nontraditional performance spaces around Chicago, and it continues to seek out new places where two people can meet and talk.