In Which We Find Ourselves Weeping With ‘La Llorona’ (The NoPro Review)
Optika-Moderna’s ‘Waking La Llorona’ pulls us down into the waters of myth.
The following contains material that could “spoil” the experience of Waking La Llorona. The initial sequence is described in detail. If you have an appointment with Dr. Moctezuma we recommend going in cold.
Sometimes a piece of work is so precise in its understanding of what it is — right from the start — that you have to marvel at the confidence. You’ve probably felt this in the opening shot of a great film, or from the first few lines of a literary classic. That sense that you’re in the hands of someone — or someones — who know their craft so well that they can show you something real and true.
Such is as it was for me with Optika-Moderna’s Waking La Llorona, currently playing as a workshop production in San Diego.
After making my way to Bread & Salt — an arts space southeast of San Diego’s downtown — I was ushered into the former industrial bakery turned experimental art center. The interior of the building feeling like it is not that far from its commercial past, the dusky scent of hops from the adjacent brewery mingling with century old wood. The usher instructed me to wait on a small rectangle at the foot of a short staircase leading up to a black curtain.
She walked up it to inform Dr. E.S. Moctezuma — the optometrist who was promising to grant a glimpse of “la vision paranormal” — that I arrived.
In a flash she returned: the doctor would see me now.
Up the stairs and through the curtain I went, where I found Dr. Moctezuma (Jennifer Paredes) a dark haired woman in wire rimmed glasses and a lab coat, framed dramatically by the light of a solitary desk lamp. She turned her head, and in that moment I found myself being looked at. Considered. Studied.
With that one glance I knew I had stepped out of the mundane world and into a charged space. Had I ever been scrutinized like this before? So much weight in such a simple thing: a look. But a look that bore right through me.
Those who attend a lot of immersive theatre are familiar with the idea of “presence”: that uncanny sense that you are in a place that doesn’t really exist. That you have crossed over the threshold into an “other” world. I’ve felt it plenty of times myself, and there have been instances where it has come on quickly: but never before with one simple look.
Spellbound, I let the doctor examine my eyes, and answered the doctor’s questions. After this she produced a device: the one that would let me see more than what the mundane world affords. It looked very much like a Samsung Gear headset, or something else of its ilk. In that moment I assumed that what is going to follow is some kind of mixed reality experience; there’s what looks like a sensor that had been affixed to the top of the headset.
She told me to put on a pair of headphones. With a tap she turned on an iPod that had been attached to the side of the goggles, and music began to play. Then she had me fit the headset itself over my eyes. Adjusted the strap so it was good and snug. I was ready for her to turn the phone that powers the whole thing on.
Instead she pulled away the front cover.
Suddenly I’m looking through a VR device whose lenses have been stripped out, and Dr. Moctezuma is looking back at me. My peripheral vision limited. My focus on what is right in front of me forced into laser like clarity.
There’s a double effect at work here.
It starts with the subversion of the technological trappings of VR headsets and the fictional trope of tech being used to disclosed the realm of the spiritual. A kind of sleight of mind magick trick which takes an expectation of revelation and then shows us the world in front of our eyes.
That world isn’t the same, however, as the mask creates a frame for the action. The core limitation of a VR headset — the poor field of view that can make one feel as if they are looking through a pair of useless binoculars — becomes a tool of intent. Everything within that frame suddenly becomes more charged with meaning, if only because of its ability to fill one’s field of view.
It is an effect so simple, and yet with such sweeping impact.
Like many a great immersive before it, Waking La Llorona draws its core text a classic tale. In this case the legend of La Llorona, which in its most familiar form is the story of a weeping ghost doomed to walk the earth after drowning her children in an act of revenge. La Llorona is said to lure other children to their fates: reenacting the events that set her own damnation in motion.
What followed after the encounter in Dr. Moctezuma’s office are a series of one-on-one sequences, each impeccably choreographed and executed by the cast, that move the audience through parts of La Llorona’s story. At various points the perspective through the goggles seemed to shift. Sometimes I was aware that I was very much myself, in other moments I knew that I had somehow slipped into the role of La Llorona.
As a whole Waking La Llorona is a work of almost pure traversal. The story is told though the actions of the audience member as they move through the space. We are made to be a key part of the choreography: walking, crawling, and yes — even dancing. As it is in an extreme horror piece, physical agency is stripped away at points. But while the means are the same, the ends are different. A current of unease runs through the piece, but each in-time step serves to draw the audience deeper and deeper into the otherworld.
At a certain point I became mesmerized by just how in-time the steps were. All of the performer’s movements — and the important transitions from scene to scene — were perfectly in synch with the music that pumped through the headphones. One moment was singularly uncanny, as performer Kelly Bartnik’s movements were tied directly to the music. Yet in order for to hit her markes with such precision there had to have been an external speaker. Still: I couldn’t feel the bass line such a speaker would have generated.
It was then that I realized that what I had thought was a “mixed reality sensor” on top of the headset was actually a small speaker.
From a pragmatic standpoint, this is a stroke of genius, but more interesting are the poetic connotations. As we moved through the space each of the participants becomes the source of the soundtrack, the thing which cues the performers and keeps their actions in synch. We are thus given a kind of unconscious agency, turned into the centerpiece of the action in a very visceral way. Much in the way that Dr. Moctezuma’s quizzical stare grounds us as the center of the emotional action.
It is these small details of design which elevate Waking La Llorona into that cinematic class of immersive experiences.
In some ways this shouldn’t be surprising considering the pedigree of the creative team. Co-directors David Reynoso and Careena Melia were integral to the development of the seminal piece of the immersive revival: Sleep No More. Yet while that work exists on the epic scale, this is as intimate as any piece of work can be.
While I have been moved by immersive work before — even to the edge of tears — this is the first work that pushed me over the edge. Not that I’m made of stone: I’m a sucker when it comes to movies, and have been known to lose it at pretty much every Disney cartoon. Yet here, in a closing encounter with Malinche (Isis Avalos), I entered into the mythic for a moment and found myself possessed by the spirit of La Llorona.
Truly, I know now why she weeps.
Waking La Llorona is a workshop production currently playing a sold out run through August 27th. There are hints of a possible extension. Be the first to know by signing up for Optika Moderna’s mailing list.
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