The Studio

October 31, 2017·56 min·5 clips

From her apartment window, Laura watches the dance teacher kiss his male student, realizing she's intruding on a private moment.

Laura is trying to start over. After leaving Camrose, a breakup, and other bad things behind, she lands in a two-bedroom apartment that feels nearly private. The old red brick building has big windows, a sealed-up fireplace, and a cold that needs a space heater. Then the window starts doing too much. Below, the dance studio has its familiar rhythm: students on the sidewalk, smiles, hugs, the easy little rituals of class ending. Then it turns. A student Laura calls Mr. Man Bun argues with the teacher, waves his arms around, and leaves angry through the crowd. Laura keeps looking. The teacher goes into his dark office, where one desk lamp catches him studying something small in his hands. She cannot tell what it is, which somehow makes it worse. Another student waits outside the closed office door with his hand raised. He hesitates. Finally, he knocks. At that exact moment, a faint tap comes at Laura's own door. She loses a few seconds. When she looks back, the student is gone, but the tapping returns. Through the peephole she can barely make out a man with black hair, standing with his back turned. The scene leaves the fear hanging there: Laura was watching, and now something seems to have noticed.

As heard by us

A window lit slow burn where loneliness and suspicion start sounding alike.

A woman newly arrived in the city opens by tracing the bad breakup and rough stretch that brought her from Camrose into a third floor apartment, and that backstory gives the piece its ache. The real pull comes from the window across the street: a dance studio, a teacher, Mr.

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Why you'd press play

A window-side slow burn that turns an apartment into a place of uneasy watching.

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