A Glimpse Into a Vietnamese Mourning Ritual with ‘Altar Ego’ (Review)
Submersive Productions’ latest reminds us not to forget
Packed around a small dining table, the audience members of Altar Ego held a stick of burning incense and reflected on the ghost of someone we knew: someone who died but without descendants to properly mourn them. And for a moment, I almost expected my recently deceased friend to walk through the door into this small room in a Baltimore museum. As we waited for the incense to burn out, that room transformed into a teeming Vietnamese forest, with projection, lights, and sound all taking a personal moment and making it otherworldly.
Submersive Productions really didn’t have to go that hard. The core of Altar Ego is a precious ritual based in actual Vietnamese culture; it doesn’t even need any fictionalization or theatrics to be insightful and moving, especially when paired with its lead’s personal history. But then they went and served up smart design decision after smart design decision, turning Altar Ego into a one-hour master class in immersive theatre.
This show is a remount of the second episode from last year’s Institute of Visionary History and the Archives of the Deep Now series by Submersive. The episodic series imagines a fringe science cult’s records being discovered by the theatre company in the basement of their frequent haunt, Baltimore’s historic Peale Center. The Peale is the oldest museum building in the United States, opening one month before the British marched through Baltimore in the War of 1812. It has a long history as a museum, city hall, school, and museum, yet again. (Unfortunately, all that history means falling short of modern accessibility standards; the show takes place across four floors with no elevator.)
Audience members are invited to re-enact the Institute’s greatest experiments, warping reality around each episode’s star. Once this experiment begins, Kim Le emerges as Kelly, a Vietnamese-American housewife hosting her neighbors for dinner. The house maxes out at five participants, so Le’s improvised chit-chat with the audience around a small dining table immediately establishes an intimate air of suburban fraternity.
Kelly guides her neighbors through the Hungry Ghost Festival. She calls it “Vietnamese Halloween, only without the trick-or-treating or the costumes or the candy.” Instead, it’s a solemn remembrance of people who are forgotten in traditional Vietnamese ancestor worship, such as anyone who died without an heir. Participants build an altar, handle incense, and share a small meal, mindfully practicing this centuries-old tradition. By inviting us into this ritual, we are connected not only with the departed from our own lives but also Kelly’s homesickness for a country she may never have been to and a culture she is losing touch with. She admits that she’s lost much of the Vietnamese she used to be able to speak, which built a language barrier between her and her grandmother. While we each mourn a specific person from our lives, she mourns an increasingly forgotten civilization.
It’s clear throughout her heartfelt performance that Le put a lot of herself into the character of Kelly, and I’d argue that if you did away with all the pretense of theatre and just shared this ritual with Le authentically, you would still have an unforgettable, tender experience. There’s a reason the Hungry Ghost Festival matters to so many people: it’s powerful. I lost a friend to cancer, and I didn’t need much to feel like I had my bleeding heart in my hand as I slipped an offering scribbled on a piece of paper into a bowl.
Not that it was at all lessened by the Institute of Visionary History and the Archives of the Deep Now’s trademark staging. Each episode takes place in a specialized room in the Peale Center, cut in half by a giant shelving unit holding boxes with the Institute’s many experiments within. Behind that is a fully armed sound & light board, hidden like the Wizard of Oz behind a curtain, but definitely more magical. The white walls of the space take lighting like a clean canvas. Through different colored lighting and a matching soundscape perfectly cued to the story’s beats, we were gently guided from a room in the Peale to Kelly’s suburban dining room to a forest in Vietnam and back. (Keep an eye on the opposite wall from the shelf as you wait for the incense to completely burn down, and you’ll catch one amazing trick I won’t spoil.)
After that moment of technical magic, Kelly invites the participants to finish the Hungry Ghost Festival ritual by sharing the edible offerings that the ghosts left untouched: sweet potato, rice, sugar cane, and boiled peanuts. Food accompanies most holidays in many cultures; it’s kind of magic that we all know about. There’s something fundamentally empathy-building in sharing a meal, especially when you’re taking a chance on completely new foods at the behest of your host. Sharing this meal with Le reinforced the feeling that this event was momentous and intimate, even without the hard work of Submersive’s devising team.
That said, they deserve specific credit for something that is especially dear to me: communicating behavioral norms to participants in a way that is seamless with the story, which helps participants feel comfortable in their knowledge of how to act and deters bad behavior. Altar Ego does this twice over. First, when we were inducted into the Institute, we were given a primer on how this cult’s experimenters should conduct themselves, building up to an oath to work with fellow researchers of all creeds, nations, and colors. This compact is sealed by parting a literal veil with a dagger. But funnily enough it was something entirely mundane that charmed me even more: the floor-protecting fabric booties we were told to wear over our shoes before entering the experiment chamber. They made each step feel a little different, a haptic reminder of the role and responsibilities you now had as an “experimenter,” like Sleep No More’s masks but without the emboldening anonymity that encourages the worst of audience behavior. Along with the incense and food from the ritual, I was delighted that Submersive was working on so many sensory levels. Second, as soon as the experiment starts, Kelly invites us to her dining room table, and there is an immediate bond. Her conversation is self-effacing and a little nervous; it’s disarming and maybe a little sad. For us, she brought up a participant’s recent Bastille Day party and fretted that she couldn’t live up to that. If anyone entirely missed the point of the induction ceremony, they now have another role to balance: that of a caring neighbor and guest. As important as it is to be told what not to do, this second role as neighbor gave us a clearer positive instruction of what to do, reinforced by Le’s control of the scene. Learning ways to clearly communicate what behavior is acceptable and unacceptable is vital to the growing immersive theatre art form, and I was glad Submersive gave us such a good demonstration of how to do it right.
There are many other small moments of clever craftmanship in Altar Ego. The Institute “induction,” the “experiment” itself, and the debrief all happen in different rooms at the Peale, giving the team precious time to reset all three even while running show after show the same night. A small desk lamp quietly comes to life just as the participants are expected to look over at that corner of the room. The crew is flexible and resourceful, deftly handling an air-conditioning outage and a surprise sixth participant despite the usual five-person cap, on the night I attended. And I’m sure you could find more than just what I noticed during my experience.
A final big lesson to learn from this show is the way that Submersive handles the debrief. After being ushered out of the experiment chamber, participants are left to their own devices in a room with free tea, surveys to fill out, a bit of dramaturgy, and even a puzzle to solve (for anyone who perhaps, incorrectly, expected an escape room). We were invited to stay there as long as we liked, and it was a great opportunity to chat with each other and reflect on our personal experience with the show. Compared to shows that kick you to the curb immediately, perhaps only moments after breaking your heart with a great performance, this was an appreciated bit of aftercare.
I’ve eagerly followed Submersive Productions since the wonderful H.T. Darling’s Incredible Musaeum. This piece ratcheted up the personal connection, while delivering a similar amount of technical skill packed into a smaller space and in less time. All that adds up to an unforgettable show. I strongly recommend jumping on Altar Ego before all those tiny five-participant shows sell out and keeping an eye out for when you can see Project P.S. as well.
Altar Ego plays again at the Peale Center in Baltimore on July 17, 20, and 21. Tickets are $18–42.
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