The Immersive 5 with Derek Spencer of Ceaseless Fun (Bonus: A NoPro AMA)
How he fell into making immersive work, his devising process, and his love of one-on-ones
Derek Spencer is the Artistic Director of Ceaseless Fun in Los Angeles. You might know him from such theatrical productions like Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan, and GRANDPA JOHNSON IS DEAD!, or Derek’s past appearance on the NoPro podcast or his involvement in the League of Experiential and Immersive Artists.
Basically: Derek Spencer is kinda ubiquitous in the LA immersive scene, and we like it that way.
We were able to grab some time with him as he prepares to open his newest show Agnosia, the first in a three-show cycle for the company in 2018.
We start off by asking Derek NoPro’s Immersive 5 questions — the core questions we are asking immersive creators about what the word “immersive” means to them and how it impacts their work. After that, you’ll find a transcript of Derek’s Ask Me Anything answers; content has been edited for clarity.
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The Immersive 5
No Proscenium: What does “immersive” mean to you?
Derek Spencer (DS): To me, an immersive experience is anything that implicates the audience as being within the portrayed fiction, or otherwise attempts to make an audience feel as though they are within the world of the experience. There are many, many ways to go about achieving that goal, and I’m not really in the business of telling others whether or not their work fits within the boundaries of “immersive.” At the end of the day, it’s a squishy term but a useful big-tent!
NoPro: Do you think of your work as ‘immersive’? (Why or why not?)
DS: I didn’t at first! I was just making the sort of work I wanted to make, which happened to be work that other people described as “immersive.” Now I think it’s pretty clear that most of what I do theatrically is immersive, by my definition at least.
At the same time, I never set out to make work that’s immersive just to make immersive work. I like to think that my work is concept-driven, and that I fit the form to suit the concept at hand. I think immersive theatrical elements are great because they allow you to shake the audience out of passive consumption by deviating from the standard levels of intimacy and agency that theater typically offers. At the same time, if the shoe doesn’t fit, I won’t force it. I imagine there will be work I make that doesn’t fit under the immersive banner, and that’s okay with me too!
NoPro: How big a role do presence and/or agency play in your work, and do you think about these factors in those terms?
DS: I think these are two elements that take on very specific valiances in immersive work. As I said above, I think the form needs to be a proper vessel for the content. Sometimes it seems like some immersive theatre-makers/fans equate more audience agency with better work — it’s fine to prefer work that provides a certain level of agency, but I don’t think more is always better here. I think very carefully about what sorts of options I want to afford my audiences because it’s so easy to overwhelm or distract the audience from what you want them to see. An example: I’ve been to shows that have used audience dialogue very well, but I can’t imagine myself ever making work that invites the audience to speak. Personally, the moment I’m asked to speak in a show, I stop thinking about the performer and start thinking about myself. That’s a great tool for certain intended outcomes, but I haven’t found any space for that type of agency in my work. I expect this to be controversial, but that’s my experience. Happy to talk more about it!
Whatever choices I make regarding agency and presence, I want those choices to be clear. Maybe the audience doesn’t even know who they are in the world (in Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan, we purposefully obfuscated the audience’s identity as an extension of the show’s core themes), but their general relationship to the world should be clear (i.e. the rules of engagement).
NoPro: What works — be they creative works, non-fiction, or other inspirations — have shaped your current work?
DS: Honestly the hardest question. I’ll start with the obvious — Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan was directly inspired by a J.G. Ballard novel called The Atrocity Exhibition; a show I did in Chicago that had some immersive/interactive elements, A Crackup at the Race Riots, was inspired by a collection of Harmony Korine writing by the same name; and our upcoming They Who Saw The Deep is a loose adaptation of The Epic of Gilgamesh. I love collaging, reinterpreting, recycling, and even misusing text, so my literary influences are varied and many. I take a lot of cues from the frenetic writing of people like Clarice Lispector or Kathy Acker, or even someone like Georges Bataille. Philosophy sometimes works its way into the mix of sources I work with — Simone Weil is a notable example off the top of my head. I really admire the way writers like Maggie Nelson or John Berger can weave in critical, discursive references with evocative, personal narratives.
The work of filmmakers like Harmony Korine, Gaspar Noe, and Lars von Trier had a heavy influence on me when I was just starting to create. While I think I’ve moved away (somewhat?) from the nihilistic visions of these artists, I think their aesthetic & narrative principles have stuck with me.
The recent Jim Shaw show at The Marciano Art Foundation was a stellar example of installation art utilizing immersive principles. Ditto regarding the Adrián Villar Rojas: The Theater of Disappearance exhibit at MOCA Geffen right now.
Oracle Productions (now defunct) and Walkabout Theater in Chicago were both huge theatrical inspirations to me, as I was just beginning my artistic career.
Finally, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t incredibly inspired by the immersive work happening around me as well. Annie Lesser’s A(partment 8) was incredible. The Speakeasy Society’s Johnny Cycle II was one of the first immersive shows I saw in LA and, while it’s super different from the work I make, it was so good and well-executed that it really changed the way I thought about structure and interactivity. Scout Expedition Co.’s The Nest was an absolute feat of set design and unconventional storytelling.
NoPro: What was the moment when you knew that this kind of work was for you?
DS: One of the first (and only) shows I acted in was a production of HamletMachine in which I played Gertrude-Hamlet. There was a scene where I got to take an audience member out of a seat, bring them to one of the storage closets, and read them a bedtime story by candlelight. I looked forward to this scene every night — something about how individual the experience was, and how personal it got, and how it immediately heightened all the senses of the given audience member.
The AMA
Kathryn Yu: What is Agnosia and how does it fit into the three show season of “The Outline of a Human”?
DS: Agnosia is a solo show that puts the audience in the middle of a home turned upside down by loss. As the name implies, the audience member is asked to enter a world in which memory and sensory input become muddled.
I’ve been describing the relationship between the 3 shows as a sort of “zooming out.” Agnosia kicks the series off on a microscopic level. We’re taking a fine lens and looking at the most basic way in which we know ourselves: in relationship to the other. From there, the series will slowly scope out. They Who Saw the Deep will look more broadly at the foundations of community and the ways in which our own personal narratives and goals constitute the identity of the collective. And finally, Stars will look at society as a whole — our identity as it can be deciphered through consumption, and the space we fill in the very system itself.
Joan S: What’s the most difficult part of putting together a show like Agnosia?
DS: I devise in a very scattered way. We make a lot of content, and then, toward the end of the rehearsal process, have to find a way to put it all together. I think one of the hardest parts of the process, but also one of the most exciting parts, is making edits and cuts. I’ve cut so many scenes that I loved because they didn’t move the piece forward!
Strother Gaines: How connected are the three shows? Is it necessary/important for an audience member to have seen one before the others or do they all stand alone?
DS: There is no narrative link between any of the shows, and each show is 100% a stand alone experience. We chose to group them because they are thematically related — basically three different shows looking at similar issues through different lenses. There are no shared characters, choices don’t carry over, etc. In a lot of ways, it’s more like your standard “Theatre Season” than the immersive model of “show cycles.”
Kathryn Yu: What inspired you to choose the format of a show for one audience member at a time?
DS: I wanted to implicate the audience in the action and allow them to shoulder some of the show’s emotional burden. I kind of want the audience to squirm with guilt or obligation or pity. Without giving too much away about the mechanics, this really wouldn’t have been possible with more than one audience member. Interacting with an actor is a totally different experience when another audience member can see you. I don’t want the audience to be aware of any other gaze except for the actor in front of them.
I think it also helps that I’d never done a show in this format before, and was excited to try it out! One-on-ones were some of my favorite scenes to direct in Reagan, and the idea of directing an entire show of one-on-one interaction made me giddy. A little off topic, but worth noting: directing a one-on-one show is taxing! Rather than sitting in my director chair taking notes, I have to be physically and emotionally present with the actors basically the whole time. Lots of others probably know this, but it was a crazy experience learning this first hand.
Strother Gaines: What’s your devising process like? How long does it take generally?
DS: This is a great question! My process generally starts with me reading a lot (A LOT!) of source material that I’m interested in drawing on. My PDF folder for the season currently has selections from over 40 books, and I’m still reading. I then start collaging and piecing together fragments and images into what I call “devising scripts.” For different productions, they’ve been anywhere between 10 pages and 200. Often, the text isn’t there to be read directly, but to be inspired by and built upon. Depending on the amount of time we have (there’s never enough), I’ll either start with purely movement-based rehearsals and then start peppering in exercises germane to the text, or if we’re in a crunch, we’ll start devising day one. Because everything is devised, a lot of design elements need to be figured out later so that they can respond the needs generated in-room.
After we’ve devised for a set amount of time — for Agnosia, it was two and a half weeks; Grandpa Johnson is Dead was four rehearsals; Reagan was more like four weeks; They Who Saw the Deep will be more like two months — we start editing and piecing things together. I encourage my actors to think about moments rather than arc while devising, so the editing phase is often the first time we really “meet” the characters, rather than just seeing the show as a collection of moments or ideas. We often make substantial cuts to content. For example, I think the total count on scenes for Reagan was somewhere around 90, but we wound up using about 55.
That’s a pretty good summary, I think! Obviously there’s always more detail, and obviously every process is going to have its own flavor based on the needs of the show.
Jonathon Irons: Are you excited about any particular technologies for use in your immersive theatre work?
DS: This might be a lame answer, but….. no. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about immersive tech and I’ve seen some super cool projects! But the reason that I do theater is because I like how unmediated it is. I like live performance, and all its idiosyncrasies, and all of the risks and intimacies that come with it. I have yet to see any upcoming tech (I’m mostly thinking VR stuff here) that I think I would personally include in my work. That being said… always down to be proven wrong! Would love to see what other people are excited about tech-wise.
Noah Nelson: When you kicked off Ceaseless Fun in LA, bringing it here in from Chicago, did you think you’d end up this deep into immersive/devised work?
DS: I didn’t even know what Ceaseless Fun was in Chicago. I had produced music, written a zine, and done a sort-of-half production under the name. Honestly I wasn’t even sure if I was looking to do theatre at all in LA. It was honestly pretty serendipitous — I can point to a lot of moments that, had they not happened, I might not be making the work I am now.
So no, I had no idea I’d be doing as much work as I am doing in this niche. And it’s only been two years!
Kathryn Yu: What do you wish to see more of in the coming year in terms of immersive works?
DS: Outside of seeing site-specific & immersive work adequately and effectively supported by city government? I’m not sure. If I can think of it, it’s probably something I would do, and not something someone else would do. I would have never thought I needed to explore a 100 square foot storage unit with a remote controlled flashlight in Los Feliz, and yet lo and behold.
I guess that’s it — more innovation! More weirdness! More ideas that make your parents confused about what theatre is!
Agnosia, which is currently sold out, runs in an undisclosed location in Los Angeles from January 18–26; tickets are $20. Keep your eyes open, you never know when things will extend.
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