‘DODO’ Is A Dream: Bricolage Breathes Life into Carnegie Museums (The NoPro Review)

Pittsburgh’s premiere immersive makers weave in and out of theatre and reality

Anyone lucky enough to sip in Pittsburgh’s autumn air before November 19 would be remiss to overlook Bricolage Production Company’s DODO, an evening so gorgeously removed from the expectations of a night out that I still think I dreamed it. Gentle yet thrilling, troubling and wondrous, DODO in execution builds on what its nationally renowned team learned from their oft-extolled prior experiences Strata and OjO, while claiming a message of “self preservation” all its own. DODO is larger in scale as well, in part thanks to Carnegie Nexus, who proves that immersive partnerships — here between museum and production company — are golden opportunities to augment both groups’ operations. Because of polished execution, careful audience management, rich content and high-level artistry, DODO is a wonderful entry point into immersive experiences, so if you’re new to the medium with $60 to spare and a birthdate in the 20th century, stop reading and sign up here.

Spoilers follow below.

“Are you afraid of spiders?”

“No.”

“Can you swim?”

“Yes.”

“Do you dream of the ocean?”

“Not really.”

“Ah. Did you leave the stove on?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

We were here now, in this high-ceilinged, white-walled space, all six of us sitting across from a delightfully droll and dispassionate man in leather shoes (Fred Frances). Fred had just materialized before us, now stripped of his white coverall protective suit that had previously masked him head-to-toe, a suit fit for his first duty of mechanically scanning us to ensure we were safe entrants to his cleanroom-like space. This initial bit was serious yet playful: a guest before me had a knee brace under his jeans which preoccupied Fred and his machine at length, while a following guest was permitted to enter sans scan. It was fun and odd, so by the time Fred spoke and had transformed into a human with a haircut and quotidian wardrobe, he held our attention without expending much effort at all.

Thus we were absorbed, answering questions dutifully, each of us interviewed one-by-one by Fred whose script was so artfully written I imagined raising my hands to the sky, thankful that a clever playwright — likely the lead writer of the creative team, Gab Cody — had written something funny and crafted and poetic. Based on our answers, we were each given an object — artifacts and fossils evoking natural history: a bone, a feather, a preserved egg, a box with a pinned butterfly, a dried eucalyptus twig, and a seashell — that would prescribe the individual paths upon which we were about to embark. Then a large freight elevator’s doors opened, a museum-staff operator nudged us inside, and we were off. Our journey as donors to the NSPS, the National Self-Preservation Society, had begun.

What’s thrilling about experiential entertainment is the opportunity to engage an audience through a range of art forms along the way, particularly time-based media, and Bricolage repeatedly excels at crafting a textured ride that affects us in heightened visual, aural, verbal and kinesthetic ways. As OjO also evidenced, Bricolage has a talent for engrossing our senses. Yet for audiences inclined toward an experience not only sensorial but also justified by exposition, DODO functioned within this framework: we as guests were here to apply to the NSPS, an organization that, as the emails and website read “sprang into existence in 1760 in direct response to a pressing need expressed by the natural world.” Its current members, who more or less hosted us throughout the evening, are “august […] like-minded individuals all rowing in the same direction […] Civilization’s ultimate ark.” With the Dodo bird as their mascot, it’s clear they and we were here to address the losses of the natural world; to, as the Dodo was unable to do, self preserve.

After-hours in a quiet museum (which the NSPS called their “host body”), we discovered various members in surprising places by following rules recounted to us by Fred, one of which was to “follow the light.” A trail of small floor lamps guided us through dark galleries decked with modern art, lush paintings and 18th century furniture until we came upon the otherworldly vision of a sage woman in a billowy gown (Emilie Sullivan). Emilie softly spoke notions about the passage of time as she struck her singing bowl and assigned us to our solo paths. Assuming I was alone with a hallway of cast heads, their eyes bending in the shadows, I almost giggled when the lights heeded my movement and with one switch were replaced by a spotlight on a painting ahead. The device was simple but delightful; I imagine a good production manager (Amy Ehrenberg) deserves applause for the uncanny timing.

In contrast there was the loud and jovial explorer (Michael McBurney) in the Wyckoff Hall of Arctic Life, looking like he’d come from an expedition a century prior, cracking jokes and sighing wistfully that there were just not as many polar bears to kill these days. He reminisced about his father’s times, when his father alone could swipe out a whole forest so quickly. He escorted us into an igloo where he recited Robert Frost’s apocalyptic Fire and Ice, before another guest and I were directed into the Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt. There the regal Yasmine (Watipaso Kumwenda) engaged us in a conversation about her civilization decades into the future. She asked if we had ever held a fish, built a boat or planned our funeral and what, like the Egyptians, would our civilization leave behind? My partner mentioned plastics, and Watipaso was impressively quick to embrace her answer, citing for how many years it takes plastic to decay, that her society no longer had the earth’s oceans, and that life was fine as long one could pay for their own climate. When she singled me out and we climbed into a mummy’s tomb, her sweet African song was abruptly ended as a security guard kicked me out of the exhibit.

The confusion as to whether or not the guard was in on the game was titillating; had the production messed up, or was this the beginning of a more heart-racing chapter of the night? The guard was so convincing, but once she left me in an attic I knew she (Carrie Tongarm) was having lots of fun playing along. It was a bit disappointing that the sudden change of pace was only temporary, that there wasn’t a new game to play, but chess in the attic with the custodian (jomo ray) was a pleasure as was learning the real value of a custodian: one who keeps, a protector. (How else can we preserve what we’ve constructed, but to keep and maintain it in good custody?) From there, Mancio (José Perez IV) collected my fellow donors and I for an appointment with “the scientist,” a bonafide zoologist (non-actor) at work in her natural element: the bird archives.

Time with this professional added crucial value to the production in part because she was friendly and never esoteric, but moreso because she could answer our questions with comprehensive knowledge that augmented my understanding of the museum’s function. She was excited to share her taxidermy work, to allow me to hold a thawing dead bird, to explain why the museum accepted and archived many a city pigeon delivered to them intact. We saw drawers full of glittering hummingbirds, we petted emerald Kakapos from the 1800s, we shared hearsay about the how the last of a wren species was killed by a lighthouse keeper’s cat, and we marveled at how Dodo birds became extinct without full body fossils left as reference, only drawings and our collective imagination. That we as audience voluntarily brought up the Dodo segued aptly into the subsequent highlight of the night: a trip to the D.O.D.O., Department Of Death and Obsolescence.

What Bricolage staged at the Department of Death and Obsolescence is perhaps best left unwritten here, to keep its magic alive for anyone who’s read this far and still may attend the event. Suffice it to say DODO veered dreamily in a new direction and resembled what it might feel like to be a living organ donor. Much of this moment owed its careful crafting to the light (Clear Story) and sound teams (District 5 Sound, Angela Baughman), and movement artist Sonja Gable, who succeeded in delivering an experience unlike anything I’ve encountered before. My plus one agreed.

As the night came to a conclusion with tea and rubies (lips sealed) my plus one and I reunited. Though rosied by the whole evening, in time we hashed out a few critiques. Did everything we do and see add significance to the greater theme, like could there have been a greater justification for including Guanyin, the Chinese goddess of sound who appeared in the beginning? Why couldn’t we remember or chew on any of the philosophy that our first guide proffered? When Fred assigned us objects, maybe there could have been more than six items from which he could choose, so the sixth guest still felt her interview answers truly swayed his choice. At one point we walked past a live wedding party that filled up the Music Hall Foyer with the rich smell of food; my fellow DODO guest grinned at me when we both thought briefly that the mostly solo night was about to erupt into a crowded night of dancing and pizza.

But this is one of Bricolage’s best ingredients, its constant weaving in and out of theatre and reality: there are actors and real people, there’s lots of help from the dutiful museum staff, there are staged moments and there are happy-accidental encounters that may not exist twice. This keeps the audience guessing, alert and valued, never to be placated by a dead moment of disconnected recitation. Yet had the first folks who checked us in at the entry point been given a script to riff on, perhaps the subject of the waiting room’s chatter wouldn’t have fallen to previous immersive events; my plus one and I figuratively plugged our ears to cleanse our palates of comparison. The joy is to be immersed in content from the first point of contact, because like DODO teaches, every moment counts.

After the experience, I feel much more connected to museums now, shaken up by how much life and learning they can facilitate. That the Carnegie Museum of Art, housed in a modern building by Edward Larrabee Barnes, and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, a turn-of-the-century masterpiece with marble halls, could be the location and centerpiece for this magical, illuminating event again prompts applause for the Carnegie staff who embraced a partnership with Bricolage. Giving experimental, original performance work a chance to properly develop into something as stunning and grand as DODO is rare. It’s also noteworthy that Bricolage embraces a 4-person directing team, with Tami Dixon, Sam Turich, Jeffrey Carpenter, and Gab Cody equally credited. Whatever their process for immersive productions, Bricolage has pulled off some of the most refined original work I’ve seen, and evidenced by this easy definition of immersive theatre, they have the ingredients for making a rather stealthy art form accessible to a broad base of cultural omnivores. How fitting that an immense Christopher Wool piece hangs in the Carnegie at DODO’s final exit. It reads:

THESHOW ISO

VER THEAUD

IENCEGET UP

TOLEAVE THE

IRSEATS TI

METOCOLLECT

THEIRCOATS

AND GOHOME

THEYTURN AR

OUND NOMO

RECOATS AND

NOMOREHOME

Or as Bricolage says, No More Seats.

DODO continues its run at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh through November 19. Tickets are $60.

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