the SCIENCE of the STAGE
A theatre troupe from Barrie, Ont. treated its audience to a three-day performance that included a trip across the Atlantic (and an unforgettable lesson on the history of experimental theatre)
heightens the surreal quality of the proceedings — the afternoon scenes in Barrie are performed for an audience of one (everyone goes through this part of the experience at different times), and to be the only adult in the room amid all this strangeness is unsettling.
6:30 P.M.
I’ve been told to expect a knock on my door, and then to be dressed and ready for the evening at 7:30 p.m. (an earlier email had said to bring a fancy dress). The 6:30 p.m. knock turns out to be a cheerful team of volunteers from Georgian College sent to do my hair. It’s a nice respite after the spooky afternoon, and I finally meet a few of the other audience members, including a bubbly local publisher around my age and a couple of retired arts administrators who are now patrons of Talk is Free.
Once we’re dressed, a stretch limousine takes us to a local ski lodge that has been decked out for what I can only describe as a ghost prom, complete with a ghoulish dance party, after which we’re told we need to travel to London to find a mysterious character named Antony. Upon returning to my hotel room (not too late, it’s a school night and those spooky dancing teens need to get home), I find a new email with a teasing message from Antony containing a link to the 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari on YouTube and the suggestion that it might make for nice bedtime viewing.
We have a 5:00 a.m. wake-up call the next morning to catch our ride to the airport (another stretch limo, which feels unnecessarily decadent, but certainly adds to the incoherent dreaminess of it all).
The journey so far has been almost entirely the design of Bartolini, who strives to turn each audience member into the protagonist of their own story. My experience in Barrie, being driven around by strangers to strange locations at dusk, allowing performers into my hotel room for philosophical discussions, donning a mask and dancing with a bunch of ghost teens in a ski lodge, has certainly been unique. It feels like I’ve landed inside a Mystlike computer game, and there’s much amusement to be gained by trying to parse out what it all means.
Bartolini’s own company, DLT, develops what he refers to as “audience-specific” theatre. It is immersive, he says, but his real focus in creating work is the relationship with the audience. “We want to build structures and shows where the audience is free to talk and respond to the performer. It’s about the audience being a real agent.”
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 7, 11 P.M., GREENWICH MEAN TIME
After a two-hour flight delay, I’m deposited at the Morton Hotel in central London, where it’s a relief to be greeted by Raylene Turner, who is not a fictional character, but the warm and patient stage manager who has a knack for putting jetlagged audience members at ease. (She’s also the person behind all those fictional emails, but shhhh.)
As with most things theatrical, London leads the pack when it comes to the immersive variety. A quick glance at the local Time Out indicates a half-dozen immersive productions of various types on any given week, like Trainspotting: Live, or the more political Bullet Tongue.
Felix Barrett, who is widely credited with reinventing the theatre scene in the U.K., founded Punchdrunk in London in 2000. The company premiered Sleep No More here in 2003, almost a decade before the long-running New York production. They’re a staple on the London theatre scene at this point, their productions (like 2013’s The Drowned Man) are highly anticipated events. The group even has an enrichment program, which allows them to work with educational institutions to create highly specific works in a variety of local communities. Over the years, a number of companies have popped up. Some, like The Big House and Dante or Die, have furthered the boundaries of what theatre can do; while others, like Secret Cinema, seem more inclined to cash in on a trend.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 8, 1:00 P.M.
The London portion of the Voyage begins in front of the hotel, where those of us who have travelled from Barrie are joined by another dozen or so people who are just there for this portion of the experience. We’re divided into groups, led to different spots along the block in front of the hotel and told to wait. “You’ll know,” we’re assured by Turner.
For the next two hours, we encounter a variety of characters (“experience agents,” in the parlance of the producers) speaking different languages (a former Ukrainian prisoner tries to intimidate us in Russell Square Park and a pretty French girl encourages us to pose for photos). Who can we trust? The Serbian-Italian man who accuses us of loitering and warns us of a serial killer before bursting into an aria? What about the distressed man we find semiconscious in a messy, blood-spattered hotel room? Should we give him a pill that might be poison? And just who is this Antony we’ve heard so much about? At one point, we’re taken to the basement of a restaurant and asked whether we think of ourselves as good people.
Through it all, our little group of four bonds as we explore the neighbourhood and the hotel. Once the whole audience comes back together to travel to the next secret location, we’re encouraged to spend the bus ride discussing what we’ve seen and experienced, what we think might happen next, and how it might fit together. The normal Thursday commuters sitting around us on the double-decker bus seem nonplussed.
In 1981, John Krizanc’s play Tamara was staged in a Toronto mansion as a sort of choose-yourown-adventure story — audience members could follow different characters from scene to scene so each person saw a different play. At intermission, theatregoers could swap plotlines with one another, gossiping over cocktails.
An audience member’s response to an immersive theatre experience depends on their personal comfort level (some people just don’t like talking to strangers or playing pretend), but the best immersive experiences create a safe environment to step slightly outside one’s comfort zone for an artistic encounter. There’s a level of secrecy, a sense that you’re in on something special that you might not get from, say, a night at the touring company of Cats.
APPROX. 4:15 P.M.
We are guided onto a boat, where it’s revealed that one among our audience ranks is an imposter — Antony may be hiding in plain sight. (The group I saw the show with was suitably surprised. The sneaky actor among us — Rory de Brouwer, who is also an assistant director on the project — did an excellent job blending in to the group, arousing no suspicion whatsoever). He was certainly the most convincing audience plant I’ve ever encountered.
APPROX. 5:00 P.M.
And now we come to the purpose of the voyage, the place where all those themes, all those questions about the line between good and evil, and how far one would go under the right circumstances, come together: a production of Sweeney Todd staged in a warehouse hidden down a nondescript alleyway.
(The Sondheim buffs among us may have guessed this in advance, as Anthony is the name of the young male romantic lead in the story.) Sweeney Todd is traditionally seen in epic, operatic productions, with a grotesque, Grand Guignol aesthetic that creates distance for the audience. But Cushman’s immersive staging puts the audience right in the middle of the action as we follow the performers between three different rooms. As an audience member, you’re rarely more than three feet away from any given performer. Even your sense of smell is engaged: the first room, a mouldy basement, is dark and dingy, and the locus of the show’s bleakest moments. Meanwhile, the upstairs is warm and smells like baking, a safe setting for the show’s lighter comedic scenes.
This intimate proximity makes the characters all the more sympathetic and tragic, and the story resonates in an emotionally affecting way after the thought-provoking journey the audience has just been on. Michael Torontow is a powerful and unexpectedly subtle Sweeney Todd, and Glynis Ranney’s Mrs. Lovett is a revelation in pragmatic desperation.
The tension lingers after the musical’s finale is sung, as the audience’s attempt to applaud the performance is interrupted when we’re led out of the warehouse and back to the boat, passing each of the “experience agents” who stare at us. It’s a chilling ending, and it’s a relief to get back to the boat where the soothing presence of Turner informs us that there is a cash bar.
The “experience agents,” the strange characters we encountered earlier in the day, finally break character and join us for a drink. It’s been a long and curious voyage for our crew — we’re no longer strangers, and one drink turns into a few. We’re even joined by two gentlemen who saw the show a few nights ago and wanted to stay on the journey, as it were. Contact info is exchanged, promises to stay in touch issued — it’s more like we’ve spent a week at camp together than an afternoon at the theatre.
At any show, immersive or not, audience members make themselves willing hostages to the artists for a little while. But unlike a play you watch passively, or even a show like Sleep No More, where you’re largely encouraged to explore on your own while wearing a mask, The Curious Voyage is an actively social experience. Us Voyageurs have spent several hours running around London, answering personal questions from strangers, trying to solve a mystery. A few of us even made small talk in a limousine at five in the morning and flew across an ocean together.
For Bartolini, this sense of shared camaraderie means the production has been a success. “One thing about The Curious Voyage is that a community of strangers gathers together,” he says. “Through the experience of the show we build a micro-community.”