Theater Works, in Peoria, Ariz., re-opened in early September with ‘CURIOUSER & CURIOUSER,’ an immersive theater experience based on Alice in Wonderland.
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Sold Out: Arizona Nonprofit Cuts Crowds, Pivots To Immersive Theater
Theater Works, in Peoria, Ariz., re-opened in early September with ‘CURIOUSER & CURIOUSER,’ an immersive theater experience based on Alice in Wonderland.
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I clicked on this article because seeing the words immersive and Arizona are two things I didn’t think I would see because of the huge amount of COVID-19 cases that have been happening since early in the summer. Unsurprisingly, this article is about a small theatre company and after some research, it looks like a non-union company as theatre companies that are opening aren’t really hiring people on AEA contracts. It seems like a cool reinvention of theatre. Alice in Wonderland seems like a perfect story to be in all these different cool spaces at the theatre. This is a perfect example of making art that is helped by its form. I like to see that this article talks about giving gloves out and requiring masks and temperature checks. However, I don’t know if the temperature checks are really helping prevent the spread of COVID as a lot of people have been asymptomatic and though temperature checks might catch some cases, it seems more like pleasing people than actually limiting spread. One thing I wonder is are the performers getting tested for COVID-19 and how is this company partaking in contract tracing/how does it handle when someone working on the production/an audience member has COVID as we’ve seen with the President how easy it is for COVID to spread without proper tracing measures/testing protocols.
As I’ve been very interested in Punchdrunk’s works even before COVID era, I love the fact that social distancing and closing theaters are shedding light on different forms and concepts for theatrical performances, of course including the immersive theater. Although there would still be some risks, I think immersive theater is much better than the original form of performances since there are significantly lesser contact between audience members. I also love how they happened to pick Alice in Wonderland as their theme; I think it would perfectly suits what people needs nowadays: escaping from the reality and going into another world. One of my very few concerns would be, what would they do if they find out that one of their audience actually had a virus. Compared to the conventional performances, in which they only have to inspect and clean the audience seat, would they have to clean the whole theater to make sure it was virus-free? In any case, I would love to visit the theater once the world get over from COVID.
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