Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Erika Wilhite, ALT
The Artist’s Laboratory Theatre isn’t letting covid-19 stop its actors from bringing their own particular brand of community-based, site-specific theater to Northwest Arkansas. The project they’ve been working on for two years now, “Good Person of South Fayetteville,” has been postponed for the duration of the pandemic — but they’ve still figured out a way to share a collection of performances devised from the play online, says ALT Executive Director Erika Wilhite.
“These events are stand-alone, meaning you don’t have to know the history of the project or the plot of the play to have a full experience,” says Wilhite of “Adventus: Secret Theatre.” “If you do follow the project and the performances related, you get to be a part of a larger unfolding of a world we’ve created for the play — an imaginary religion with a caveat ‘prophecy.’ Eventually we will produce ‘Good Person of South Fayetteville’ in person and hope to create some momentum for when we finally do.”
Wilhite says the notion of “Secret Theatre” is not a new one for ALT.
“For many years, ALT produced Secret Theatre as a ‘venue’ for the work we were currently developing,” she says. “We have always produced plays that took a while to develop, so we’d use Secret Theatre to try out ideas and to experiment with things like immersive and site-specific staging and character development. Secret Theatre was always for small audiences, and the ‘secret’ was what the performance would be, and often even the venue of the event until the last moment. In a way, we have returned to our roots: shoestring budgets and buckets of creativity.”
Wilhite answered some questions about the project for What’s Up!
Q. ALT has been working on “Good Person of South Fayetteville” for quite some time now — can you give a brief overview of the project, how long it’s been in production, and where in the process you expected to be at this point?
A. We developed the play over a two-year research process that included interviews, focus groups and community conversations about homelessness and housing insecurity. During the script development process, we shared the play with audiences through staged readings and a workshop production. We were meant to produce the premiere of the play in 2020, and as a result of the pandemic, we had to rethink how to share the story with our community at this time. The play is site-specific and takes place on Ozark Regional Transit and at locations throughout South Fayetteville, such as a laundromat, a park, parking lots and a residential home. We decided to postpone the full production until it is safe to convene again in groups. Meanwhile, we have devised performances based on the characters and circumstances of the play for
audiences to experience remotely. “Good Person of South Fayetteville” is an adaptation/deconstruction of “Good Person of Sezchuan” by Bertolt Brecht. The premise of the play hinges on the arrival of three deities who will be looking for a “Good Person,” who audiences are tasked with finding as the story unfolds. In “Adventus: Secret Theatre,” we have taken ingredients from the play — the setting, the conflict, a few characters — and created intimate, immersive performances on Zoom, SMS and Instagram.
Q. The pandemic has proven so challenging to so many arts organizations, yet most of them are finding ways to connect with their audiences despite the challenge. Many have expressed the opinion that exposure to the arts is more important than ever right now. Does that statement ring true to you?
A. I agree with that statement because art is a tool, and we need it now more than ever. Art stimulates the mind, stirs the heart — it starts conversations, causes self reflection, and it can create spaces (physical and digital) for folks to connect across our common humanity.
Q. “Adventus: Secret Theatre” promises an interactive quality. I know you may not want to give too much away, but can you say a little bit about that?
A. Each performance includes preshow engagement — if the audience opts in. If they do, they will receive digital “artifacts” of the play — videos, photos and graphics, instructions and more. During the live Zoom events, people can be expected to be called upon to speak, but never at great length. We utilize the chat and polling features in Zoom, as well. Everyone can participate at their level of comfort, and during each performance we set expectations of that.
Q. Are you discovering any advantages to online performances?
A. Though these circumstances pose a challenge to connect with audiences who do not have access to the internet through a computer or device, we have seen accessibility increase for folks who can’t physically attend a show due to numerous reasons. But also [there’s] an opportunity to create intimacy between strangers in a time when many of us cannot be in the same space with strangers. As an immersive theater artist, I am excited about how to engage audiences with plot clues and themes in the audience’s personal space and in their own self-guided experiences. How to extend the story into the lives of people outside of an organized public event. How to make it a living culture, the world of this play.
Actually we always intended to include this type of engagement with audiences leading up to the production. ALT creates immersive theater, and we have been keen to create transmedia performances around the in-person production. So audiences would have been asked to follow the characters on Instagram, the Prophecy would have been built up, but mostly on a marketing level. So in a way, we have been given an opportunity to expand the form of our play, to break down the divide between the marketing of the work and the work itself. In a way, it’s parallel to, or even a commentary on, how we as individuals are crafting our personae via social media. Now that covid has stalled much face-to-face interaction, our online interactions might seem more real to us than our “IRL” lives. We’re living in a period of surrealism in which “what is real” isn’t all that certain. Transmedia performance allows us a lot of potential to capture this moment.
In a way, it’s parallel to, or even a commentary on, how we as individuals are crafting our personae via social media. — Erika Wilhite