onstagepittsburgh.com: From the moment audiences walk into the Carnegie Stage to attend Off the WALL Productions‘ #UglyCry – Grief Hits Different, they are greeted with a uniquely immersive theater experience. A staff member politely approached me to explain that they were creating a playlist and asked what song I would like to have played at my funeral. I slightly panicked and found myself blurting out Hanson’s “With You in Your Dreams.” This answer was far less clever than my fellow audience members who chose Kansas’ “Carry on Wayward Son” and NSYNC’s “Bye, Bye, Bye.”
3 comments:
I actively try to follow the arts in Pittsburgh, and I had no clue that this was happening so close to our campus. This serves as just one more reminder that we do live in the Carnegie Mellon bubble. That being said, I got my first taste of interactive theatre this summer when I saw Sleep No More, and I think it is such an interesting model for the arts to follow. It really can adjust your sense of difference between you and a character that is being played, which I think is one of the most impactful things about it. I wish I knew what kind of content warnings were bring given about this show from reading this article. I can see a world in which people become very overwhelmed by this sort of art. I would think that they would have some sort of resources for the audience either following the show or at the box office.
I’ve been seeing posters for this show everywhere since I arrived at CMU. I was honestly ignoring them because the title made it seem kind of weird and like an older person trying to interact with the youth and failing miserably. I decided to click on the review just because I wanted to see what the play was all about. If there’s one thing I learned it’s that a title can really make or break a show. This show sounds AMAZING, but because the title was so awful I hadn’t even bothered to pay attention to it. Frankly if it hadn’t been for news quiz I never would have known anything about this play. If I had the time I would love to go, but alas I have crew so this review will have to suffice :(. I love how interactive the whole show is with audience participated karaoke and QR codes linking to surveys that you do throughout the show. This has the potential to be the future of theater. We often think of cell phones as the enemy of live entertainment– people on their phones will ignore the show in front of them– but the idea that phones could actually be a part of a show is so cool. I’d love to look more into that in the future.
This is such a powerful show! I had Off The Wall Productions as one of my theatre’s for my second Basic Design 1 project. Through this project I became quite familiar with their work and their incredible relationship with the Chain Theatre in New York City and the Tjarnarbio Theater in Reykjavik, Iceland. “#UglyCry” is actually transferring to the Chain Theatre after it finishes its run here. During my email conversations with Hans Gruenert, a producer at Off The Wall Productions, I learned that” #UglyCry” is their first try at immersive theatre. I found this very interesting considering how well they have done it on the first try. They have 2 shows going on at the Carnegie Stage at the same time right now. “#UglyCry” as well as “When Jesus Divorced Me.” I am seeing the show this Saturday and Hans Gruenert offered me a backstage tour and I am very excited and interested to see how they store the two shows and change the set in between each show. All in all, if you get a chance to see “#UglyCry” go see it! I hope Off The Wall Productions continues to do more immersive theatre experiences!
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