Bushwick Daily: As you step into the inconspicuous Bushwick warehouse (located right next to The Johnson’s), you enter a departure gate, clad with carpeting, a cushioned bench, and a smiling flight attendant behind a booth. For your reading pleasure are four issues of The Times, except they date back to the 1970s. Indeed, everything in your surrounding is a little dated. After watching a short boarding video, the doors to The Grand Paradise are opened, and you (and the other 60 guests) are transported to a distant, beachy tropical resort set in the swaying, raging ’70s.
2 comments:
This sounds actually incredible. The thing that I worry about with Sleep No More is that it all feels a little bit contrived. It seems to feel like the overall goal of the production was to be edgy and immersive and that it had to try really hard to get there. I wouldn't expect anything less from a warehouse in bushwick though, to feel actually really cool without trying to hard. That's one of the overall problems with immersive theatre in the first place, the art can be so distracted and off-base with the aesthetic response that the production is attempting to elicit from the audience. If the production itself has an artistic concept that is intended to simply make the audience feel a certain way without being carefully "artful" in its direction and creation, does it possibly forget the other aspects that make immersive theatre so enthralling for the audience in the first place? Possibly. If the goal is not to elicit a response from the audience, but does so simply through its concept rather than through a contrived and forced attempt, the feeling of the piece will be much more organic.
I think that immersive, audience- participatory theater is so incredibly important to the progression of theater as an art form. This show sounds like so much fun; I love the idea of being led into different rooms, being talked at directly by the actors, and being welcomed as not just a visitor, but a part of this crazy world. I’m so glad that theater artists are beginning to “break through the proscenium arch” more and more to create an experience for audience members that involves more emotional, and perhaps physical, involvement than just watching a stage like it’s a movie screen. I think immersive theater amplifies all of the best parts of performance art that set it apart from on-screen entertainment. This article made me really excited for the audience- participation concept for Bob and Dave and Ren. During Intents and Insights, the director’s description for the headphones aspect in Act III reminded me a lot of the Neo- Futurists work in NYC, where they invite audience members to put on headphones and perform instructions given to them, which combine and interact in order to create a comedic, ridiculous, and/ or touching scene which the rest of the audience members are able to enjoy. I also read about a french theater company which sets up “mystery scavenger hunts” around the city, where they’ve planted visual clues and actors which are referenced in their headsets and journals that they are given. I think theater that breaks the boundary between “spectator” and “performer” is so important in order to keep audience members engaged in a world bombarded by screens.
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