Review Rundown: The One Where We Disagree About Stuff (6/15/21)
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This time out we have eight reviews of seven different shows and experiences. Including one hybrid show where we had someone on the ground and a team online. Guess which show from the title?
Okay. That was an easy one.
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Need more? Last week’s edition HAS YOUR BACK.
The Book of Separation — Odyssey Works
$30-$120; Online; Through July 18
While the gift of a full blown Odyssey Works performance remains a rare thing, the legacy of their work has been an undercurrent in the age of experiential theatre. It is no understatement to say that things would not be the same if Odyssey Works did not exist. Now, in the waning days of the COVID-19 pandemic here in the United States, the company has produced a remote work that is quite unlike any I’ve experienced over the months of lockdowns and shuttered performance venues.
— Noah Nelson, from The NoPro Review
Land of Milk and Honey — The Catamounts
$25; Westminster, CO; Sold Out Through June 26th
The interactive portions are not particularly novel, but they are appropriate and contextually relevant. We are served snacks (ice cream, of course), taught how to tie a cow with a rope for quick release, cast votes on immigrant school board expenditures, and even help a neurotic corporate marketer figure out how to position “death” as desirable.
The Land of Milk and Honey commits to a huge under-taking in having so much story to tell, yet choosing to tell it in such a non-traditional way. The talent of the cast is in a league of its own, but even with their flawless performances, this show requires a bit of processing to bring it all together. Which is to say, read the pre-show materials to get the context you need for the journey The Catamounts have prepared for you. It takes some mental energy and commitment to get there, but don’t let that distract you from being present in each of the moments, either.
— Danielle Look from her forthcoming full review
Liminality — Museum of Future Experiences
$75; Brooklyn, NYC; Previews through July 1
In the heart of hipster central Williamsburg, lies a nondescript building which is easy to pass by, which is host to the Museum of Future Experiences. Liminality is the newest show in the space, a collection of immersive experiences, something of a technological sampler of different artists’ work. Three VR experiences are shared with the audience: Life Giver, a journey into post apocalyptic sweden and a possible escape from the planet; Mind Palace, an exploration of a deteriorating relationship; and Conscious Existence, a call to enjoy and experience all the miracles that nature provides, and which surround us daily. Interspersed are gorgeously designed aural experiences, curated to explore the themes of Liminality, of transitioning between and transforming into.
From the initial waiting room to the main performance space, the set, sound and lighting design are all truly exceptional, helping to transform the space into a stunning 360 degree experience. This is aided greatly by the “only permanent Ambisonic installation in New York City,” a fantastic technological achievement allowing breathtaking sound design to occur seemingly all around the audience. Four giant obelisks (speakers) surround the space, looking down on the seated audience, while an impressive installation of lights perform wizardry above and around you.
However, tone-wise, I feel there is a little ironing out still to do. We were welcomed into the performance space by an austere woman exuding scientific confidence, who was immediately captivating in her description of the experiments in Liminal spaces which we were to take part in. This fantastic invitation into the world didn’t seem to carry further into the experience, however, as a meditating Silicon-Valley-genius-type took over for the VR instructions portion of the evening. Perhaps leaning further into the idea of a scientific experiment, would aid the transition into and out of the VR elements, and give more narrative reasoning to the experience as a whole. Also, one note that an audio “jump scare” early in the experience, meant I found myself ever so slightly on edge for the rest of the performance, which felt counterintuitive to the relaxing nature of the rest of the piece, which wanted us to let go of ourselves.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Liminality, and am intrigued to see what future experiences await me at the MoFE soon.
— Edward Mylechreest
The Mailbox — Tiny Box Theater and Ya Chin Chang
$25–40 ; Anywhere (via Snail Mail); May/June Run Concluded
Though nothing beats the speed and convenience of emails and texting, there is something delightfully old-fashioned about snail mail. I love writing and receiving letters; they are tangible forms of communication that we can tuck bits of our personalities into, and keep to re-read and treasure. So when I was offered the chance to review Tiny Box Theater’s play-by-mail experience The Mailbox, I jumped at the chance.
The Mailbox arrived in my — you guessed it — mailbox, a stack of glossy cardstock instructions and sheets of whimsical drawings of animals dressed like detectives that I was instructed to cut out to use as paper dolls.
The feathery pencil drawings, done by Hong Kong-based artist Ya Chin Chang, would be at home in a children’s picture book. Grey and white with occasional splashes of vibrant red, the characters of The Mailbox gave the experience a cozy atmosphere.
Through a combination of Ya Chin Chang’s drawings, puzzles, and audio clips on Tiny Box Theater’s website, the player is invited to join the characters, who are detectives at the Worldwide Wildlife Investigative Firm (WWIF), as they try to solve the mystery of the vanishing mailboxes.
The mystery seems small enough at first, but as the player gets deeper into the storyline, what seems a simple enough caper to solve becomes a much larger one that explores themes of climate change and animal extinction.
The Mailbox offers many clues to help out young players, but is complex and interesting enough to be enjoyed by adult players as well. Prompts along the way encourage players to think about the material as it relates to their own lives, and ask them to photograph their cutouts of the characters in new scenarios that relate to each theme.
The Mailbox is a gorgeous, well-produced, and thoughtful experience that offers a unique opportunity for immersive lovers of all ages to solve a mystery by mail.
— Cheyenne Ligon
Passion: A Ketuvim Play — TurnKey Theatre
$10–35; Remote; Ongoing
While lovingly crafted, written with heartfelt emotion, and able to capture a genuine sense of warm desire, in its attempts to find strength in the often maligned or ignored figure of Vashti, Passion manages to stumble into pitfalls either unthinking, informed by harmful prejudice, or both. I really enjoyed my time with Passion, curled among heady fumes of cardamom and clove, pouring over words of love bathed in candle light, and in the end view the work as ultimately well meaning. However, Passion is undeniably clumsy. By using its characters as broad representations of classes of people and overzealously pursuing a concept without quite thinking through the ramifications within the story it tells, Passion ends up both running head first into the text it tries to adapt, and engaging in unnecessary horizontal aggression. While I’m rooting for TurnKey, Passion feels like a strong first draft in need of some more care.
— Blake Weil, excerpt from forthcoming full review
Satellite One — Chromasonic
$35 per person; Venice, CA; Ongoing
I have never experienced anything quite like Satellite One, by Chromasonic. For fans of light and space artist James Turrell and his “Ganzfeld” installations, this immersive light and sound bath is a must. Both a communal and individual act, groups of eight participants are led into a white, egg-shaped chamber with a central, neon light column. During a 30-minute composition, participants may enter into a visceral and meditative state.
Rather than an out-of-body experience, it was a profoundly inner-body experience. Sensory input became heightened and blurred in surreal or even hallucinatory ways. At the same time, I felt grounded and deeply in tune with myself. Turrell employs the German word “ganzfeld” for his installations because it describes the sensation of a “total loss of depth perception.” With the addition of sound, Satellite One takes this a step further, resulting in a total gain of self-perception; it’s a full-body, vibrational event.
And Satellite One couldn’t be more perfectly timed. Although the project’s inception was pre-pandemic, the intention was always to achieve “radical presence,” through which participants would reconnect with themselves in this physical, sensory-driven installation. After more than a year of isolation and digital entrenchment, Satellite One is the perfect antidote.
Multimedia artist Johannes Girardoni and sound artists Joel Shearer and Orpheo McCord comprise the three founders of Chromasonic, which serves as a collaborative art studio and research lab. By exploring the intersections of art, science, and technology, a key goal is to investigate “the potential of art as a catalyst to harmonize cognitive and somatic states.” Located in Venice, Satellite One is a permanent installation, which will include evolving programming.
Satellite One is an utterly soulful experience. Los Angelenos (and anyone visiting LA), grab your tickets immediately, if not sooner.
(Accessibility: Although there’s no strobing, epileptics can reach out to the Chromasonic team with questions or concerns. Those with mobility devices can experience Satellite One’s program in a half-ellipsoid at the same address. Chromasonic will soon add full accessibility details to the website.)
— Laura Hess
Threshold (In-Person) — Parabolic Theatre
£30 in person; London; through 26 June 2021
Eager to get out and enjoy some indoor/outdoor interactive theatre? Not able or ready to travel to London but want to actively participate through the comfort of your own screen? Parabolic Theatre has the show for all of you. What’s more, it’s entirely Covid-safe.
One of the first shows of its kind, Threshold invites up to five groups of in-person attendees to partner with a digital audience to solve a multidimensional crisis spilling into the streets of Bethnal Green. Every group has its own goals to accomplish but everyone is working together — each team’s efforts will directly affect the resources of the others, simultaneously. In a masterful effort of coordination, Parabolic delivers a puzzle-solving, adaptive acting, site-responsive alternate reality narrative across several city blocks’ worth of audience agency, regardless of physical location.
Good for active players (and some voyeurs if you book with more outgoing friends), there’s humor, there’s drama, there’s safe distancing in a lovely setting, there’s men in black and sociopolitical questions about interdimensional asylum-seekers, there’s a table service bar. Under the current restrictions, you can’t beat it.
With six tracks to follow and multiple endings, Threshold is the hot show to hit this summer, over and over again.
— Shelley Snyder
Threshold (Online) — Parabolic Theatre
£15; online; through 26 June 2021
In the end it probably would have been better if Parabolic Theatre had not invited members of our review crew to take part in the remote part of their latest show, Threshold.
After years of hearing effusive praise for in-person work like For King and Country and the online series House of Cenci I was looking forward to this one. From the invite it sounded like an intriguing and ambitious prospect: we’d be acting as the support squad for our in-person agent. NoPro London’s Shelley Snyder would be on the ground while NoPro LA’s Kevin Gossett and myself would be here on the West Coast. All of us playing together to navigate the story.
This is not what happened.
To keep it brief: I’m not even certain what impact the online contingent had on the action that unfolded in person. Nor was I the only one. Technical snafus abounded, from Zoom issues to problems with Google Docs. Those of us on Zoom didn’t even realize the show was over until one of us pointed out that the performers were taking bows. It was, quite simply, the most disorganized and least fun I’ve had in an online show all pandemic.
The idea of having one set of players online and another in person working together — or even at odds with each other — in the same sandbox is feasible. But this isn’t it. We hoped that Shelley had a better time (Ed. note: she seems to have), and recommend that Parabolic goes back to the drawing board on the online component, or shelve that half of the show altogether.
— Noah Nelson
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