Forged in Life: ‘Chained’ Puts You In A Classic Role (The NoPro Review)
A New VR/Theatre Hybrid in LA Invites You To Get Scrooged
Last night I was visited by three spirits.
Well, four, if you’re really counting. But “three spirits” is how the saying goes and it’s a thing that happened.
The story of what they showed me is a familiar one, but though I’ve seen and heard it many times before I’d never lived it until Chained.
Creator Justin Denton and his partners have summoned up a holiday treat that harkens back to the old tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve. They invite us to live out the most famous one of those tales: Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. This is accomplished by using just about every reliable tool in the immersive toy box.
The lobby for Chained, which is on the ground floor of Great Co.’s new offices, gives off a mid-winter eve vibe, helping to dispel the traffic bustle of the latest spur of New Hollywood where the production is housed. A kind of austere warmth emanates from the simulated candlelight and decor, the wall between you and the world that the Denton and his team have built hidden behind a featureless door.
Step beyond that door and another one awaits. One that leads to the place where you’ll leave behind the limitations of the physical world and be whisked away through time and space.
The promise of immersive is that the discipline, properly applied, whisks audiences away into other worlds. That is often accomplished through meticulous set design, insightful performances, and in some cases through the use of technology. It’s a rare thing to get two of those in a single production. Chained has all three.
The age of hybrid theatre/VR experiences is only now dawning as the technology comes down in price and can finally be matched to the performance techniques of interactive immersive. Behind the doors of Chained the skills of veteran immersive actors Haylee Nichele and Michael Bates are put to use ground the technological aspects and stage magic into something that is emotionally true. (Nichele and Bates originated the roles, with their parts covered by a repertory cast of veteran immersive actors Genevieve Gearhart and James Cowan.)
On the technical and production side of things, it doesn’t hurt to have the design team at Aaron Sims Creative, and the producing support of Here Be Dragons all under executive producer Ethan Stearns of Madison Wells Media, either. This is an all-star team.
It would be easy enough to see the work in Chained merely through the optimistic eyes of the technophile. After all: it’s a rare thing when real time motion capture is used to animate interactive characters performed by live actors. It’s the kind of thing that we’re really only seen at film festivals and tech conferences so far. Chained is one of the first, if not the first time, that this from has been presented to the public as a ticketed event. That would be enough to recommend it.
What puts Chained over the top is that it all comes together in service of story. Every touch on the shoulder, every prop that’s echoed in the digital and real, every step you take choreographed in a dance that takes place seemingly just for you.
There’s still a hiccup here and there, to be sure. An overly taught tether cable kept the on boarding from being as smooth as possible, and as dialed in as the tech is, anything involving computers is rarely flawless.
But the bumps in the road matter less than the point of the story. And the story of Chained has a real heart that captures the essence of Dickens’ tale.
The beautiful thing is that heart is yours.
Chained currently runs through December 16th at GreatCo at 1655 Beverly Blvd in Los Angeles. Tickets are $40. The current run is sold out, but new slots will begin being released on December 1st.
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