By Lori Wood, Lucas Artists Residency Manager

(Left to right) Augustina Woodgate, Sebastian Bellver, Kalisolaite ‘Uhila

After dinner in the LAP Commons, a season of dominoes. With the fireplace lit and the lights down, the Commons is filled with the sound of dominoes clicking, subtle boasts, and bursts of triumphant laughter. The tiles stretch out in patterns across the redwood table. The patterns change. The poet likes straight lines for a time. She lays down tiles and laughs in trills. The novelist initiates sharp corners and lays tiles at right angles, commenting drily, always a straight face. The playwright bluffs. When we have nothing, we reach into the bone pile and take our chances. It’s Matador we are playing: the dots must add to seven, a magic number. The radio artist parses the directions and reads us our marching orders in her commanding voice. But the performance artist has a relationship with the unseen, and his tattooed hand is always full of zeros: tiles mostly blank on one side. He stymies us by laying them at the end of a path and blocking access. We laugh. It doesn’t stop happening. The fire flickers in the hearth and the voices carry on around the table late until the night.

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Dealing Dominoes.
Matador!
You could go with this or you could go with that.
Que passou? Let’s see.
End on a high note.

Artists: Monica Sok , Kalisolaite ‘Uhila , Mike Scalise , Sebastian Bellver , Agustina Woodgate , Amahl Khouri , Tran T. Kim-Trang .