Looking forward looking back

Anniversaries are benchmarks
milestones and ways of measuring time.
Now as the 50th anniversary of TSL
is here–marking a 1/2 a century of art making.
20 years in New York City as a theater company
and now 30 years in Hudson, NY as a multi-art
center.
It is a time to assess and to see
in the mirror
of time and space
what has happened over
these five decades.
Time & Space Limited was an idea that became a name
and a name became an organization and a means
to make a way for producing radical ideas for theater.
The events produced by TSL all reflected the limits of time and space –these two illusive ideas drove many
of the decisions that created TSL’s work choices. We
searched for spaces and carved out time as we navigated the landscape of a most vibrant NYC.
Mussmann’s theater vision is this:
the theater is the one place where we practice thinking.
The theater and what occurs on a stage
or in a living room ,
or at a supper table,
or on a platform,
or on a soapbox,
or at a parade
on a screen in the theater
all have one thing in common—limits of time and space
plus 2 ingredients
(the performer & the audience).
This view of theater that Linda Mussmann
started 5 decades ago and gave a name to her work/practice?
The name is nothing cosmic just it is what it is: TIME & SPACE LIMITED…and a reflection of Mussmann’s basic struggles to balance the making of art in the latter part of the 20th century.
TSL was born 1973 in a loft on West 17th St..later Mussmann found a small store front to perform some plays on Bond Street on the lower east side, then she moved to the Universalist Church on the upper-west side of Manhattan from 1973 to 1976..then later that year TSL would move to a loft/storefront on West 22nd St. in Chelsea (here Claudia Bruce would join as a collaborator and Mussmann’s muse)….from this time and space many TSL performances were rehearsed and performed in a multiple of spaces in NYC & Europe….until moving to Hudson in the 1990’s where TSL is today……where the dream expanded and continues to be as it is today a multi-dimensional place unlimited in its vision.
This anniversary year notes just the first part of the dream which continues to expanded and continues to be a space
unlimited in its vision for the future.
For more about the theater work of Mussmann/Bruce please visit the archives located here: https://archive.timeandspace.org