Portland’s Hand2Mouth Brings Childhood Fantasy to Life with ‘Dream|Logic’ (Q&A)
We interview director Jonathan Walters about the new kid-friendly immersive show
Hand2Mouth, Portland’s longest running theatre ensemble, is committed to creating original work and reaching non-traditional theatre audiences, often by touring to communities where they live and work.
Their latest piece, Dream|Logic, is an immersive theatre piece designed for both children and adults, taking inspiration from fantasy and science fiction. Elements of the experience have been developed with local teenagers in the company’s Student Voices program which provides theatre education for underserved youth at multiple Portland sites.
We spoke to director Jonathan Walters over email to learn about this upcoming immersive experience.
This interview has been edited lightly for clarity.
No Proscenium (NP): Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background in the immersive arts?
Jonathan Walters (JW): I started my career in Poland, with poetic street theatre. This type of avenue for avant-garde artists — that is, people working with image and poetics instead of drama and text — is one where they can become hugely successful. Teatr Biuro Podróży (Travel Agency Theatre), the company I worked for, toured to massive street fairs, arts festivals and public events, performing their complex and beautiful large scale works to groups that at times were in the thousands.
I took this experience and have been devising and creating new theatre performance that follows their principles: accessible to all, impactful in scope and immersiveness of design, and believing in the sophistication and humanity of all audience members to fill in and complete the richest parts of shows.
Hand2Mouth Theatre has toured works for festivals, in theatres, in unusual spaces, and in galleries for 18+ years but we have really been focusing our work now on complex levels of audience interaction interwoven into a more complex theatre performance. This is our first effort at an all ages show, and is certainly our boldest and biggest immersive project.
NP: What, in a nutshell, is the Dream|Logic project about?
JW: It’s an idea sprouted from the creators sitting around remembering the most influential and impactful books, movies, and TV shows from our childhood that transported us and took us on a journey far away from everyday life. We came up with the bold idea that by doing an immersive experience, and mixing adults and youth into the same experience, possibly, we could recreate that experience in a live setting.
NP: Why create this experience? What inspired the team to work with teens in this way?
JW: Our theatre company has been exploring and deepening how interactive and live our performances are, with our last several pieces relying on audience live-told stories, or live interviews or interactions to unlock the most emotional and authentic parts of the show. With Dream|Logic the idea was to go all the way down that road and make the audience the real hero in the journey, and their stories and dreams be the final culmination of the show. Our creative team was excited about building an entire world collectively. They are a mix of devising theatre makers and artists/designers who work in installation, fashion, and live music. And they keep saying things like “this is the most collaborative project I’ve ever worked on.” Actors dream up rooms, designers dream up text, the blend and blur is working to a much greater whole than the usual roles.
NP: How is the audience incorporated into the work? What kinds of choices can the participants make?
JW: The audience is told at the beginning that they are a specially assembled group (because human beings are rarely ever invited into the dream vortex world) who are our only hope to repair the broken machine. Along the way, they have to solve certain kind of challenges, some based on music/sound, some based on using their brains, but the most important choices they make are the dreams, risks, and personal stories they choose to (or choose not to) share — they become the most important pieces of the story.
NP: How are you designing around audience agency, consent, and safety?
JW: A few things — audience members are always asked or invited to take part. Audiences are not touched without consent, and also are welcome to not respond or reply to any of the questions they are asked. Non-responses are always reacted to by actors with a positive, thankful tone (or at least with a funny, in-character acceptance of this). We have structured the show to gather details from the audience anonymously, and they are spoken/reused by different audience members in a “hidden” way.
NP: What’s surprised you the most during the development of this project?
JW: Just how insanely complex organizing a multiple room, 40-person, fully-designed space (with rooms converting and switching between the audience’s use of them) piece, complete with a new score, entirely new script, and new types of interaction. Basically, how do you direct and create and watch all of these unique events and weave them into a cohesive core?
NP: Who is the ideal audience member for this show?
JW: A bright, open-minded, lively, curious human being who has the following life experiences:
Was ever, or is currently, a child.
Ever had, or is currently having, a dream.
NP: What do you hope participants take away from the experience?
JW: Realization that the real power we all have to change the world for the better is to share our dreams and hopes with those around us, and to hear that from others.
Dream|Logic runs February 23 — March 11 at Alberta Abbey in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are $5–25.
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