“As a nation we’ve begun to rethink our rela­tion­ship with food — what we eat, and where it comes from,” says set designer San­dra Gold­mark. “Now is the time,” she con­tin­ues, “to rethink our rela­tion­ship with con­sumer objects as well.” Along with hus­band Michael Banta and a num­ber of fel­low the­ater arti­sans, Gold­mark will open a four-week Pop-Up Repair Shop in Inwood this June.

In a video for the pop-up shop’s suc­cess­ful Indiegogo cam­paign, Gold­wa­ter explains that “This shop is the pilot pro­gram of a larger project aimed at break­ing the cycle of use-and-discard con­sumer goods.”

Begin­ning June 1, you can take your house­hold goods to Pop-Up Repair’s home at 4975 Broad­way. There, a staff of the­ater pro­fes­sion­als with years of on-the-job expe­ri­ence in mak­ing and fix­ing a wide range of objects by hand will be on hand to repair your lamp, chair, kitchen item, small elec­tron­ics, bag — or what­ever else you may bring in. Accord­ing to the shop’s descrip­tion, “The first few cus­tomers will be ‘pay what you will,’ and from then on we will charge a rea­son­able fee (this is part of the exper­i­ment, to learn whether and how much peo­ple will pay).”

One fac­tor bar­ring con­sumers from seek­ing repair on their bought goods is the mat­ter of cost effec­tive­ness — with man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers con­struct­ing prod­ucts that quickly break or obso­lesce, it is often less expen­sive to buy a new replace­ment than it is to fix what’s bro­ken. The Repair Shop is an exper­i­ment aimed at dis­rupt­ing this waste­ful cycle through a pos­i­tive model: afford­able, thought­ful, community-based labor.

For more infor­ma­tion on the Pop-Up Shop, fol­low them on Face­book and watch the video below to meet the repair­ers you’ll find at 4975 Broadway: