April and May Events plus Back Catalog of Reviews
Hi there, everyone. We’re gearing up for a spring of immersive. Quite a few events as well as a bunch of reviews I’ve needed to clear out. I’ve got dates for things I’m going to see, so look out for those if you’re looking for a buddy.
Upcoming Immersive
Heads-up that with the exception of a couple, I already have tickets to these and don’t know about availability, but you are very welcome to go when I’m going.
Vicky Archives - An immersive piece at the Tank where you have encounters with “memories” as a mysterious organization leads you through group exercises. I’m seeing this with folks on Sunday, April 21st at 8pm. It’s $40.
D&D: The Twenty-Sided Tavern - Billed as “an interactive experience for you and 500 of your newest friends”, it looks like you use your phone to make decisions and it affects what happens with actors on stage in a parody fantasy RPG. D&D nostalgia is not really my bag but I got comped this one, so I’m in. Looks like it’s typically $59. I’m seeing it on Monday, April 22nd at 7:30 if you want a friend to see it and cringe with.
Third Law - Culture Lab in LIC is presenting this play-meets-game experience that will be at least an interesting combination to witness if nothing else. I trust Culture Lab for the time being. $30 tickets. I’m seeing it with a crew on Friday, May 17th at 7pm.
Mercer Labs - Yes, I know I said I would see it already. (I haven’t.) Yes, I know it’s probably going to suck. (Hazard of being a critic.) Yes, it’s too expensive. ($52.) It’s my lot. Do you want to push this boulder uphill with me? Come on. I promise that if it’s bad, I will mercilessly destroy it for your entertainment afterwards. I’m going to do this sometime when my semester is over, post-May 14th.
I Do Adore You - A 1-on-1 phone show about crafting a love letter. This one is by Parker Sala, a senior editor at No Proscenium (that thing you back on Patreon, right…) and a generally cool human, so while that’s not an endorsement of the piece, at least you know the artist is good folk. It’s pay-what-you-want.
Maho Ogawa: Japanese Tea and Ritual Room - Another piece at Jack (see Up Until NOW below), this is a series of installation spaces and rituals around Japanese tea ceremonies. It’s only up for tomorrow, Saturday the 20th. I can’t see it, but others on the list are. Looks like it’s $20.
Illumination NYC @ Battery Park City - I’m not sure I would call a public light installation show immersive, but No Pro does, so I’ll go with my peers here. It’s free in Battery Park City a night from May 2nd to May 4th. I’m going to do this on the 2nd or 3rd. If you have a preference, let me know and we’ll coordinate.
Medea - A three floor show at LaMama exploring the refugee crisis, with audiences participating both in-person and online. I’m trying to figure out if I can see this one live, but I’ll catch it on line if not. $30 in person/$10+ online.
Concerts
Two coming up that I’m going to and excited about:
Feeble Little Horse, Racket NYC, May 4th, 8:30pm - Scuzzy alt music for scuzzy alt fans. I think they’re great, but check it out and join us if you like it.
Mannequin Pussy, Brooklyn Steel, May 16th, 8pm - Oh the new album is good. This band is just killer pop punk and at least for me, that’s the jam. I’ve seen them before and they deliver live.
Reviews
Up Until NOW: Midair for Sometime - My full review is here, but the short version is that it’s an interesting multimedia mashup of film, live theater, and haptic technology exploring the issues of found family and transformation. Some elements (the film content, the performance) work better than others (the haptics, the audio descriptions during the film), but the piece does an interesting job trying to be fully inclusive and its theme is explored well. It gives me some confidence that the gallery it showed in, Jack, has a good eye for weird work.
Casting - This show was a remount of a work made in LA in 2019 during a 40-hour immersive jam and it got a lot of buzz then. I personally loved it, but talking with others, your mileage may vary. It’s an absurdist take on the audition process that’s meditating on what it means to perform for others. You go through a series of silly audition exercises and then the show disintegrates into surreality. I thought it was brilliantly bizarre in a silly and disturbing sense, but a lot is going to depend on how familiar with auditions you are (people who had done film auditions found it missed the mark) and what exact text is read. Apparently, the dialog of the show changes in different showings. Others thought all the texts were random, but the version I got was very thematically tight. If it comes back around, I would check it out if you like truly absurd work, but know that quality seems to vary from show to show.
Stalker - I have previously argued that magic shows are immersive, so I’m pulling that card now to tell you DO NOT GO SEE THE MAGIC SHOW STALKER. It’s terrible at every level. The performers are not confident at all, such that when you see them, you realize just how critical confidence is in magic. They do lame cliched tricks and they don’t even do them correctly — they actively screwed up at least two that I noticed. And the show has no theme. It’s a piece of underdeveloped trash. Warn your friends away from it.
Witchland - An immersive theater piece styled as a quasi-haunted house about the most polluted place in the United States. I really liked the idea of the narrative — using a true story of industrial devastation to create horror — and the puppetry employed in the performance was terrific, but otherwise the show was so half-baked I couldn’t believe I was seeing it in New York. Weak acting, a groan-inducing script, and a total lack of consistency in lighting cues and props. (A truly bad severed hand actually made us laugh out loud at one point.) I admire the thoughtfulness in theme and I learned something about pollution I didn’t know, but this piece just proves how hard immersive is.
Poison & Pearls - A really tight little dance performance exploring Alice in Wonderland as a trip through drinks and seductions. This is performed by the Thistle Dance Company at Bathtub Gin downtown, and it’s a great example of doing something small and doing it rightly. There are three dance numbers which examine Alice as she stumbles into different parts of Wonderland and is drawn in by its strange alluring characters. There’s a couple of mild interactive moments involving drinks, but mostly it’s a show happening all around you and it’s charming. I think the run is finished, but a little bird told me it’s going to be mounted again soon in an amazing location, and you should definitely see it when it does.
Mother of Frankenstein - A few of us played this narrative-in-a-box experience in which you investigate a fictional version of Mary Shelley’s biography. It’s three volumes of light puzzles that are designed to emulate moments in Shelley’s life and reveal the dark secret behind her family and the creation of the novel. At times, there are truly amazing moments of connection between the activity you’re doing and the story being told. There were at least two interactions we thought were just brilliant in how they pulled us deeper into Mary’s life and experience. That said, other interactions were onerous and the whole third section was built around a puzzle that was so miserable we basically wiped out in the middle and zipped to the end. It’s a mixed bag, but the good moments were high enough that it could be worth checking out.
Lies & Liabilities - Last weekend, I played in a blockbuster LARP (or live-action roleplaying game) about the Regency Era. The LARP lasted two days and in it, about 80 people played pre-assigned characters having romances, intrigues, and liasons with each other. I don’t advertise LARPs normally, especially not expensives ones you have to go to Racine to play, but I do want to shout out Lies & Liabilities as an excellent piece in the medium. It’s well plotted, well framed, and well staffed. What’s weird about roleplaying is that it can be fun just to talk to three skilled players with no props and no pizazz, so if you pay for a LARP, it needs to bring something to the table that’s not just your commitment. This one did. From the setting to the plot hooks to some really great scene work (including having us sit through an hour-long sermon in church so we could gossip with our neighbors while ignoring the priest), this LARP is a posterchild for the value of a big, pre-planned game. If you want to try LARPing at some point, you can’t go wrongly with this one.
That’s all for now. Shout if there’s something you want to see, and more soon as we march into the warmer months.