Photo by Evan Sigmund

Anand Pallegar, bespoke and brimming with confidence, his palms upturned, smiles at the gathered crowd. 

“The future is so PINC,” he tells them, repeating the event’s slogan from a stage that is lit up, ironically, in bright green. 

Like John Ringling, Sarasota’s original master of ceremonies, Pallegar and the team at DreamLarge have spent the year since 2018’s PINC (People Ideas Nature Culture) collecting curiosities from around the globe: professors, artists, wonks, a cartographer from Hungary, a documentarian from Tehran, even a luthier from the far off land of Columbus, Ohio. Pallegar promises that his audience will leave the Sarasota Opera House  totally transformed.

Pallegar’s creatures, of course, are more than just impressive resumes—like Ringling, half the thrill of Pallegar’s performance comes from the ever-present threat that the show could go off the rails. Will a joke go too far, or will the many discussions of environmentalism and affordable housing resonate uncomfortably with the audience? Danny Houck, self-taught craftsman and creator of fine violins, exemplified this sense of anything-could-happen by announcing that he would no longer be making musical instruments. He is now dedicated to using hermetic magic and invocation techniques in order to channel the spirits of dead artists. He claims to have contacted Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Mark Rothko, and others that he is not yet ready to announce publicly.

The danger, of course, is all a part of the show. Like the crystals and opals that artist Tyler Thrasher cultivates as a part of his artistic practice, PINC’s end result is a happy mix of directed chaos and professional showmanship. Genuinely interesting people are rarely predictable, and PINC is undeniably populated with interesting people.

Dr. Jack Levin is a mild mannered professor who happens to write books about serial killers. He’s met Charles Manson. Gelareh Kiazand is a documentarian who has, over the course of her journey, documented the shrinking Arctic Circle, followed a nomadic tribe around rural Iran for months, and even documented the ancient art of Muslim prayer rug weavers. Matthew Diffee is a quick-witted charmer out of Denton, Texas who draws absurdist cartoons for the New Yorker and other publications. Stephen Wiltshire is an artist on the autism spectrum with a flawless memory and an interest in cityscapes.

There’s a host of these characters, but the patchwork of ideas and experience that one is left with at the end of the day starts to make a certain kind of sense. Creativity can come from a variety of sources: everyone on stage was defined by a sense curiosity, open-mindedness and the ability to pay attention to details. Pallegar ends the event by telling his audience that "together, we’re inspired to dream larger in approaching community problems in new and divergent ways." The hope of this event's founders, then, is that the audience will take home many of the same qualities shared by the presenters and disperse their effects in our own Sarasota community.

Photo by Evan Sigmund