My first foray into Immersive Theatre (Patreon)

Doing theatre as a child is a bit like attending an immersive show. The sets are big enough to feel like a different world, you're part of the action, and you see parts of the play that are outside the actual script. Actors create backstories for their characters and, when you're in the show, you get to hear about them. If the play itself is particularly boring, you get to watch the actors play out those backstories in ways that are never visible to the audience.

In high school I saw The Donkey Show, an immersive production of Midsummer Night's Dream set in a disco and I fell in love. This was what I wanted theatre to be all the time, something that took you into a new world.

So that's the major reason I started working on Curiosities. I distanced myself from theatre for a lot of reasons, but I never really stopped loving it. And going to shows Like Sleep No More and And Then She Fell, brought that old longing back. Even though the logistics of creating an actual immersive show seemed damn near impossible, I wanted to do it more than anything.

The first time we workshopped it, I got the impression that the show was not very good. When they remounted it, it sounded like it had improved but....might still not be very good. There's a sort of fever visible in actors, writers, and directors, when they're talking about a show that they are too invested in to look at objectively and it usually results in audiences that are confused, underwhelmed, and often bored, because whatever grand visions those actors/writers/directors have, it's all wrapped up in their heads and not translating to the stage. I know this problem well, I've LIVED this problem more times than I can count. After the preview performance, my fears were confirmed by my friends at the bar.

Imagine someone did an immersive production of Cabaret, where the audience spent most, or all, of their time in the Kit Kat Club. If they were sitting in the right place they might overhear Sally and Cliff meeting for the first time. Actors would take their hand and lead them to other parts of the space where they could witness scenes from the rest of the show. You know, the plot parts. If you were not someone that got lead by the hand somewhere, you would only see a cabaret show that suddenly had Nazis at the end.

Now, that could actually be pretty cool BUT ONLY IF YOU'D ALREADY SEEN CABARET.

This is an original show, and all of the plot takes place in one on ones. That's a large flaw and I still don't know if anyone has actually pointed this out to the writer/director/producer/star. Incidentally, this is precociously the problem with having a writer/director/producer/star.

This is one of my greatest fears, both in my art and in my life, that there are big, honking, problems that I am too close to to see.

HOWEVER

It has been interesting to watch the show course correct. Three days in, they almost canceled the rest of the run. The cast really wanted to do the show, though, so we went forward. And I'm really glad we did, because one of the producers watched the show as an audience member and GAVE US NOTES. The most important note being that the cabaret needed to feel like a party.

This illicited a whole heap of side-eye from the burlesque performers because after the first performance we'd been told to reduce our cheerfulness by 75%. This show was serious, it was INTENSE, and so we must be serious, too. But an audience doesn't want to be in a show that is dour and INTENSE from front to back. No one does. Also most of our time was supposed to be spent making small talk with the crowd and dropping hints about the rest of the show and it's really hard to make small talk without being cheerful.

So for the next show we amped up the party. We danced, we laughed, we grabbed each other's butts, and the AUDIENCE FUCKING LOVED IT. Not only did they enjoy the cabaret more, they got more invested in the plot at large. They talked to more actors, they reported a secret to one of the other characters and the actors had to adlib a new scene. It was great and everyone left looking excited and happy to have seen the show. Before that change, most of the audience rushed out while avoiding eye contact with the cast members.

I really hope this doesn't sound like me shit talking the show that I'm in, because I'm not. I admire how far they've managed to get this show and I admire how much this cast believes in it. If this show was just bad, I would say it was bad. I would say that even if it was just mediocre. It's not GREAT and it might have enough internal flaws that  it may never be great. But it has definitely become *interesting* which I think is really important to any piece of art, and it has become entertaining which I think is also important to any piece of theatre.

If you are in New York and would like to see Curiosities, you can use the discount code FREAKS to get $35 tickets.