An oral history in one act · A
stage play by Marlin Thomas
Every building holds a story.
The largest public housing
project in North America. Ninety-six buildings. Six city blocks. Some seven thousand lives — and
one night of testimony.
Scroll · the record begins
An oral history in one act · A stage play by Marlin Thomas
Every building holds a story.
directed by: DeMone Seraphin
The largest public housing project in North America. Ninety-six buildings. Six city blocks. Some seven thousand lives — and one night of testimony.
Scroll · the record begins
The two voices of the play
The landlord speaks. Then the tenants do.
NYCHA · Public NoticeQueensbridge Houses · LIC
Welcome to Queensbridge — the largest public housing project in North America. Ninety-six buildings across six city blocks and more than three thousand units in a park-like setting, replete with playgrounds, a community center, a library, and shopping. A testament to American ingenuity and concern for the welfare of its poorest citizens. With the government as their landlord, the tenants are assured a clean, healthy, well-maintained living space. Its approximately seven thousand residents — from every race, creed, color, ethnic group, and religion — live together in harmony.
Lionel Russell · "Pharaoh"
Here is where you go when you have no place to go. So no one can see you. And no one can hear you. When you leave here, you carry with you six blocks and ninety-six buildings. Every brick is on your back. I've seen a lot here. Some good. Some bad. Mostly good. But we shine the bad. At the end of the line, the bad mounts up.
NYCHA · Development Record
Long Island City, Queens, NY
96Buildings
6City blocks
3,000+Apartments
~7,000Residents
70minRunning time
What it is
A decades-long resident of the country's largest public housing project describes the trauma of living there, his complicity in it, and his journey to incomplete redemption.
Set in the auditorium of the Jacob A. Riis Settlement House, Queensbridge stages an oral history as it happens — an interviewer, a recorder, and a man called Pharaoh, telling the story of a place built to hold people out of sight. It has no acts and no scenes. It has quanta: bursts of dialogue and action that inform each other. And it has no fourth wall — from the first moment, the audience is part of the work.
