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Apply for 12 Minutes Max: The 12 Second Edition


Introducing 12 Minutes Max: The 12 Second Edition

A note from our curator, Alyza DelPan-Monley:

Live in-person performances as we knew them are currently impossible. But if live performance has taught us anything, it is that there is always a way forward, cultivating our changing immediate realities into opportunity for art.  

Introducing 12 Minutes Max: The 12 Second Edition. It’s online. It’s a twelve second piece. 

Remind us that there is something absolutely essential at the core of live performance, and show us how to translate that essence into this new platform. How do we experience the ephemeral when things can be rewatched and recorded? How do give and receive eye contact with an audience member through a screen? How do we learn to hold for laughter but to also not assume the laughs will come? How do we evoke a story that uses presence and intention while sitting alone in our bathrooms?

As Adrienne Maree Brown reminds us, “There is a conversation that only the people in this room right now can have. Have it.” We can still have that whole-hearted connection between the performer and the viewer. Let’s have it. Together. Alone. In twelve seconds or less.

The only requirement is that it is 12 seconds or less. These 12 seconds can be a new work or an adaptation of a longer work, an experiment in an online medium, or all of the above! Fill out application here.

Launched by On the Boards in 1981 and currently presented by Base, 12 Minutes Max is an informal, low-tech showcase of contemporary and experimental performance works in dance, theater, music and multimedia art. This is the first 12 Seconds Max in the program’s history.


(Photo by Jim Coleman of Sebastian Arredondo in 12MM Feb. 2019)