livedesignonline.com: How important is a venue? Touring productions always have to adjust the show to the space, but designers often create in ways that make the show adaptable to anticipated venues. And scripts? They usually stay the same.
Unorthodox Arts, based in Boston, is, well, unorthodox. For its first production, Dust and Shadows, rewriting the script to suit venues and respond to spectators was part of the plan. Company members created their own roles in a sketchy 20-page script for a murder mystery, staying ready to elaborate and revise. At some performances, particular props were used, at others they weren’t, and sometimes they were used in unanticipated ways.
4 comments:
Unorthdox Arts is on to something really cool. They are combining interactive theatre with improv with a plot that is connected with the world we live in. The show sounds like it would be a ton of fun to go see, but even more fun to get to work on. The challenges that come with the audience getting to look at props sound very hard, but in the end I suspect they pay off. The traditional effects we use on stage don't work as well in spaces like the ones Unorthodox arts uses. So they came up with their own solutions like blood stored in a knife. These sorts of ideas are really great. It's good to see people pushing the technical limits of theatre in ways that don't involve lots of money and large spaces. I am very interested in seeing more shows like this.
There are two elements to this story which I'd love to parse out:
1. Adapting the story of the play to reflect site-specific information and historical accuracy is a really neat idea, and a TON of work for the team. The fact-checking has to be airtight, and probably is much harder than in times before smartphones. What's unfortunate about the structure is that in order for the show to be financially feasible in any site likely requires a longer run than most murder-mystery companies. More general stories have the ability to do one-nighters and take their show anywhere at any time for any client - these guys need time and effort to make it worth taking that job.
2. The setbacks and solutions in this article point to some of the challenges and pitfalls of a small self-run theatre company, especially on a more improv-driven loosely-scripted work like a murder mystery. The blood knife has fallen out of favor in the theatre world because there are more reliable methods of blood delivery that are the same night after night, but this it has an application here with Unorthodox. I'm intrigued by the voting mechanic - if the box does reveals the most voted-for killer, it loses an element of most murder mysteries where the cast can adapt the moment right before the reveal. In this case, the cast and the audience both find out at the same time. Just a personal feeling that the former is more interesting than the latter.
Unorthodox Arts' show is like a mash-up of the Kennedy Center's "Shear Madness" and Punchdrunk's "Sleep No More". This kind of theater gets me very excited because it is so smart. The actors have to play off the audience and get a chance to connect with them in a way that most shows don't. It respects the viewer's intelligence and asks them to exercise their imagination and minds to participate. It lets the audience have a much more fulfilling and thorough experience. I wish more shows were like this. I feel theater is about taking the audience on a journey with you as opposed to just showing them your own journey, immersing them in the world you have painstakingly created, and leaving them with something they didn't know before. That's exactly what Unorthodox Arts does. I take my hat off to every person involved in this extremely intricate, intense, and specific process.
This is a murder mystery dinner that I would actually enjoy attending....I've always been pretty put off by the stand 'Clue-ish' type of approach but the ever changing nature of this performance based on the audiences input brings an entirely more authentic element that's seems a lot more....fun? Alex makes a really good point and I couldn't say it much better myself -- "aking the audience on a journey with you as opposed to just showing them your own journey, immersing them in the world you have painstakingly created, and leaving them with something they didn't know before. That's exactly what Unorthodox Arts does. I take my hat off to every person involved in this extremely intricate, intense, and specific process."
So, well done Unorthodox Arts, well done.
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