You are the ceremony. This is the ritual.

You Are The Ceremony, This Is The Ritual examines a twelve-year exploration of site-based performance at Silo City, a sprawling campus of abandoned grain elevators and industrial structures on Buffalo’s waterfront. Created by Torn Space Theater—an experimental performance company founded in 2000 by Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola in Buffalo’s Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood—this project operates at the intersection of theater, installation, architecture, sound, and public ritual. 

At the heart of these works is the invention of a parallel society: an evolving ceremonial culture defined by its own symbols, rituals, beliefs, and systems of governance. Through this imagined civilization, the productions probe themes of identity, resistance, transformation, heterotopias, and evolution. Functioning as both public spectacle and social ritual, each annual performance invites audiences into shared acts of reflection tied to seasonal cycles, communal experience, and the changing cultural landscape of early 21st-century America. 

Rooted in ancient performance traditions where civic participation was central to communal ritual, the company emphasizes collective authorship and public gathering as essential to the artistic experience. Created in collaboration with a broad network of artists, tradespeople, and community participants, the works integrate military reenactors, marching bands, blacksmiths, gospel singers, operating engineers, boxers, dancers, musicians, horseback riders, and nonprofessional performers alongside contemporary theater artists and designers. Since its founding inside the historic Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle, Torn Space Theater has continually transformed industrial landscapes, civic spaces, and historic structures into immersive performance landscapes. 

Torn Space Theater’s site-based work represented the United States at the Prague Quadrennial, featured in the internationally curated exhibition installed at the Trade Fair Palace of the National Gallery in Prague in 2023. Described by PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art as “conceived on a scale most theatre companies can only dream of,” the project stands as a testament to the power of place, ritual, and large-scale public creation.