See Familiar Spaces Through a Stranger’s Eyes in ‘Being/With: Home’ (Review)
Nichole Canuso’s experimental dance installation transitions into a fully remote experience for two
Ideas flow through us, creating subtle shifts in our existence.
It’s Thursday morning, and I’m waking up alone in my second-floor bedroom, a little later than I would have six months ago. When I get up — it takes a while — I make a pot of coffee, feed my exceedingly patient cats, and pad 12 feet down the hall to my home office. This has been my commute since March 12. Today though, I get to my office, open the door, and step into a knee-high pool of cold, clear water.
The room is flooded.
The water, thankfully, is imaginary. But my visceral memory of splashing it at the walls, at my younger brother, at a stranger who is miles away — those are real. I arrange my laptop next to a stack of old passports, a broken plastic cow with three legs, and a 2014 photo from my brother’s graduation. My ankles feel cold and wet as I sit down to write.
(The following review is based on a dress rehearsal performance. Light spoilers follow.)
Attending immersive theatre before March 2020 wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience for me. I loved being able to spend a few hours inside somebody else’s creative vision. But getting there required obsessive planning — a twisting of schedules, a constant comparison of prices and dates, and finally, the mental work of clearing enough space to be present.
Being/With is a different breed of immersive theatre. Director Nichole Canuso creates a space for her audience to be present, but it’s not her mindscape we’re supposed to explore. Canuso initially conceived the show as an experimental dance and video installation to be run live on-site for two strangers at a time, each in separate cities. It transitioned into a fully remote companion piece just as the pandemic began shutting down shows across the Eastern United States. (I was already familiar with Canuso’s work as I was lucky enough to sit in as one of Being/With: Home’s test audiences during the early stages of its transition.)
To be fair, my experience as an attendee of one of Being/With: Home’s final dress rehearsals in September started a few hours earlier. I had received an email on Monday with instructions for my scheduled experience, but the instructions were long and overwhelming, and I had approximately two million meeting requests to deal with between then and Wednesday afternoon. I got to “Please read this email in its entirety” before flagging it to read entirely… later. No big deal; I had seen a version of the show in May. How different could these instructions be?
Luckily, not too different. I knew I would need to have three personally meaningful items on-hand and that I would need a laptop, my phone, and a pair of wireless earbuds. I would need enough space to move around and, New England weather permitting, enough light from my window for whoever would be on the other end of the call to see me and my room.
I try not to create artificial versions of my life for the camera, now that so much of how we connect happens remotely, but vanity persists. Over lunch, I cleared away an old laptop stand, a bunch of bird toys, and a stack of papers that wouldn’t have been visible on cam but would have bothered me anyway. I switched out my regular office chair for something without wheels and wandered around my room, gathering anything that was making me feel some sort of way in that moment. By 2:30, I had a pile of potentially meaningful items within arm’s reach: paintings and a shooting range target behind me, little dolls made by a friend, photos, a tiny plastic orc, and a handful of official documents on my desk. I wasn’t sure how to choose just three, so I arranged them like a buffet and moved on. I brushed my hair, put on lipstick, and clicked the link.
“Date/Time: Wednesday 9/9/2020 at 3:30 pm
Zoom Link: Zoom Room.”
By 3:36pm, I am panicking. Do I have the right link? Am I in the right time zone? The Nichole Canuso Dance Company is based in Philly, so EDT is probably okay. I dig through the email, one eye on the Zoom screen, looking for clues. I’m on the verge of emailing an overly anxious apology for failing to test my tech before now when a new screen appears. “Being/With: Home will begin shortly. Take a deep breath, relax, and we will greet you soon.”
I breathe, remembering that this is a dress rehearsal. The screen is blue with abstract images of water; waves sound in the distance, then relaxing music, and — after a while — voices. They aren’t overly produced. I hear far off cars and occasional bursts of static. I can’t see whoever’s speaking, but I listen to them smiling. It feels like talking to friends over the phone; one person describes an unknown object’s soft wooden surface. Another talks about having dinner with their family. Each voice speaks for less than half a minute before the waves come back. I keep breathing.
This is the moment in a show when I expect to finally arrive. Any planning that could have happened is over and whatever happens next is theoretically out of my hands. My job is to be present, so I focus in. Suddenly I am looking at a very regular, wave-and-story-free conference call.
This transition is temporarily jarring; it goes exactly like the start of every other meeting I’ve been on since work became “work from home.” I’m wondering if I should have removed my cheesy profile pic before logging on when a person named Nic blips on-screen next to a black rectangle labeled “Maiko.”
Nic tells us that nothing will be recorded without consent, asks for our pronouns (the rectangle is she/her, I’m she/they and pleased to have been asked), and walks us through a series of setting adjustments in preparation for the performance. It takes a few minutes, and by the time we’re through, I’ve lost some of the calm that came from listening to waves on the welcome screen. Nic tells us to mute our mics. These technical adjustments are necessary, and even though they have pulled me out of the moment, I am grateful for their effect. Looking at the screen, mic muted, I see my face and the face of a Japanese woman who is roughly my age. She’s a stranger, and I don’t know why she’s here or where she lives. But her name is Mai, and she is my partner for the next 30 minutes.
The remarkable trick of Being/With: Home is that it manages to pull you inside somebody else’s intimate space — physically and mentally — without taking you out of yours. A flaw of socially distant immersive theatre is its limited capacity to transform an audience’s physical space offscreen. Canuso bypasses this barrier by turning the screen into a portal, connecting two spaces to create something new and worth exploring.
NCDC’s web site gives us some insight into the show’s intent:
“I’m interested in the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell other people. ‘Being/With’ is a performance installation that connects audience members, two at a time in a guided encounter. The core audience experience of ‘Being/With’ is a virtual duet and intimate conversation with a stranger.”
Clearly, you won’t actually enter this stranger’s room. But you will be invited to examine their space on-screen; to look closely at their hands, their furniture, and their three objects in ways that would be inappropriate-to-uncomfortable during a work call. The stranger will look closely at you.
Canuso ignores any pretext for the show’s format as a guided meditation; we are not asked to pretend that we are at a spa or that I am being interviewed for a new job. Instead, an unseen speaker prompts me to look around my space, to re-contextualize a room I have become intimately familiar with since March. They ask us to perceive without trying to name the objects we see. Mai, the voice, and I play with the sound of words. We make shapes with our items and our hands, allowing what we see on screen to influence the next shape, and the next, and the next. Suddenly, I am playing a game that I have only ever played alone — choreographing a ballet of fingers, conducting imaginary orchestras for adoring crowds of finger-contortion enthusiasts — with the person on my screen. She is beautiful. We are not embarrassed to be dancing together.
Our narrator continues, weaving us in and out of each other’s stories, building something new and expansive but ephemeral. I won’t go into the details of my specific performance; the show isn’t recorded for a reason. But by the time we are asked to remember the feeling of water, asked to imagine water filling our chosen space, asked to look down at our reflections — it’s no longer a stretch. We have been guided to a moment that allows for the possibility of flooding without anxiety.
The show continues. The water we have imagined recedes, and we are given space to ask our own questions. I don’t know what I’m going to ask until it comes out of my mouth: “Mai, what is it like, going from 38 to 47?” This stranger doesn’t have to let me into her life. She doesn’t have to tell me anything, but she does not demur. She answers.
There’s a moment of self-conscious awareness that sometimes comes for an audience member suddenly pushed into the spotlight. I don’t know whether it was the spotlight or the audience that was missing. Was I a participant? An actor? Just a person in her room on a video call? But that awkward moment never came. Mai and I spent thirty minutes being present for ourselves and each other. The stories we told were facilitated by a space created for and by the show, the unseen crew, and our connection. I still don’t know where Mai lives or what she does for work. But we’ve shared space. I know who she was on September 9, 2020, and I know she has changed me.
Ideas flow through us, creating subtle shifts in our existence. It’s Wednesday afternoon, and my ankles are cold with the memory of water. The sound of waves brings me back to my laptop; Mai is no longer on my screen, and the credits are rolling. Being/With: Home has come full circle, depositing me right where I began. I feel at ease. There is nowhere else to go, for a while. I’m stuck at home during a pandemic. The days may continue blurring together, but they may not. What happens next is no longer a given. There is no next step, no way to prepare. The room is the same, but my relationship with its space has changed.
“Look at your hand, your strange familiar hand. Now wave. Thank you for spending time here today. Goodbye.”
Being/With: Home continues through October 3. Tickets are Pay What You Wish $5–50.
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