Center City coffee shop creates unique listening experience just for you

'One Moment Now' is meant to keep you company while you sip your coffee.

Alicia Vitarelli Image
Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Center City coffee shop creates unique listening experience just for you

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- Sometimes, we find it hard to sit alone with ourselves at a coffee shop.

Maybe we get lonely, or maybe we feel awkward.

That's where a local theater company comes in, with a unique theatrical experience created for just one audience member: you!

"We're quite bad at being alone places," says KC MacMillan, the producing artistic director of 'One Moment Now.'

"It takes a certain kind of confidence to be alone with your thoughts in a public space," said MacMillan.

'One Moment Now' is meant to keep you company while you sip your coffee.

"You sit alone, as one audience member, for about 20 minutes in the center of a busy cafe," MacMillan says. "You are taken on an audio journey, and you're part of the experience."

This theatrical companionship concept was born in Ireland.

"It was created at Bewley's Café in Dublin, which is a famous landmark in Dublin, by this company called Murmuration," MacMillan says. "They let us bring it to Philadelphia to present our audiences. Essentially, you listen to a story."

You also get a bag of coffee beans that become part of the experience.

"So you're essentially not just a listener, but a co-creator," MacMillan says.

It's all happening at the Good Karma Cafe in the lobby of the Wilma Theater in Center City.

The show is just $5 and members of Tiny Dynamite set you up with the experience.

"Some of our audiences have said, 'Oh, it feels like a spa experience,'" MacMillan says. "Or, 'I had things to do and I forgot what they were.' It feels really nice at this time of year to be asked to sit in a spirit of contemplation a little bit."

'One Moment Now' runs Friday through Sunday at Good Karma Café.

Visit tinydynamite.org for more details.

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