Living Myth: ‘Prison X’ Puts You Between ‘The Devil and The Sun’ (The NoPro Review)
Immersive theatre, mythology, and VR collide
The real joy of the festival circuit is encountering work that gives a glimpse of where things could be going. That’s true of any medium: theatre, film, virtual reality. These are works that may not be the most polished, but they have a fire to them that is directional in nature, animated by the intentions of the storytellers to not only explore themes and ideas but to push against the boundaries of how a story can be told.
This is the case with Prison X — Chapter 1: The Devil and The Sun, an interactive virtual reality narrative from director Violeta Ayala.
Set inside a Bolivian prison, the participant embodies the role of Inti, a young man who has been sentenced for trafficking cocaine at the border, who is also a sun god. Through the course of the piece the world of the prison unveils itself to be something more than a place for earthly punishment: it is in fact the Neo-Andean underworld.
The whole work is framed as a theatrical performance, with the participant first being instructed by The Jaguaress (Ayala) to don the mask of Inti, before entering through a velvet curtain into the world beyond. Everything — from the theatrical lobby to the world beyond the curtains — is created in an expressionistic art style, although the surreal notes expand the moment one steps across the theatrical threshold.
What thrilled me most from a form standpoint was how much that Prison X is clearly drawing on the logic of immersive theatre. Whether there is a direct line in the projects DNA back to immersive theatre works or this is somehow a case of spontaneous generation matters less than how the work itself is constructed, and the ways in which the unique properties of virtual reality are leveraged to create an experience that is more than what could be made in the real world. This marries well to the mythological nature of the story. Mythological tales are always these pivot points between the personal and the cosmic, and Ayala and her team drop us right into one of these hinge points.
But for a moment we need to stop and acknowledge that there are some serious rough edges to the piece. Our Executive Editor had to tap out of her run-through of the experience due to motion sickness issues, and every shift in scene brought an immersion-breaking return to the ur-space of Steam VR’s loading dome. These are the kinds of things that one expects on the festival circuit, as the work that we’re encountering is often produced at the bleeding edge of the technical capabilities of either the hardware, or the teams involved. It’s what is done with the limitations that matters.
Here the leaning into of the Quill-aesthetics to create surreal caricatures of people and mythological beings goes a long way to making the journey of Inti one that delights even as it disturbs. There’s a something of the haunted house to the proceedings, as we are drawn deeper and deeper into the world of the prison. Taking steps forward that unveil more of the mundane and surreal realties. Theatrical lighting tricks are coupled with desaturation effects to pause the action and highlight a monologue before agency is restored to the viewer. We’re given free roam in a space only to be halted when we get close enough to a character with agency of their own. At points the scope and scale of the world is twisted and transformed to bring a thematic point home.
While there’s a degree of polish that missing here the vast majority of Prison X is perfect exactly as it now exists. My hope is that the team is given resources to further their explorations, lock down some of the technical issues, and get the widest distribution for this that is possible. And no, that won’t mean collapsing it into something that can be interacted with through an iPad screen.
To get the point, you have to be in the story. Which is the real point of all this immersive stuff.
Prison X — Chapter 1: The Devil and The Sun was part of the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier.
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