“Once upon a time, long, long, ago…(the late seventies?), David Gordon was invited to give a concert at St. Mark’s and asked me to join him.  At the time we would have begun to rehearse, my father became ill and I flew to England with no clear knowledge of when I would return.  Two days before the concert, it became clear I could return to New York but I couldn’t get a flight out until the day of the performance.

I landed in New York in the afternoon, went home, bathed and went immediately to St. Mark’s for a long, slow warm-up and work through of Chair by myself.  The church was peaceful and calming except for a furious and lengthy row between two men about lights and cost…

As the audience arrived so did my jet lag.  Trisha Brown hugged me and told me I was crazy.  The Chair sequence was to be performed four times with variations, each time facing a different direction.  Ain Gordon agreed to help by sitting on the floor with a large sign saying FRONT and changing his location accordingly to keep me from getting lost.

I needed to go to the bathroom and was told to go through the audience, up the stairs, many convoluted directions…I was conserving my energies and this didn’t seem wise.  I went into the dressing room.  There was a sandy, unfinished patch in the corner.  I peed right there on the floor.

Years pass…the fire happens, then the renovation.  In the very corner of the dressing room where I peed, there now stands a beautiful, shining lavatory.”

– Valda Setterfield, 1999