Well Under the Radar
Backlog of reviews and a handful of upcoming, all from the immersive underbrush
Hi there, immersonauts. Sorry for the delay of the last couple of weeks. Running a college program that’s on the verge of becoming official sometimes gets the best of you. I’m doing clean-up here for a bunch of things I’ve seen recently from the festival circuit, and I just got a rush of small immersive things come in so this will be a hefty list of more indie things for those of your rooting for the Davids over than the Goliaths.
In other hilarious news, in my first experience of comeuppance for a negative review, I just got my ticket refunded and got kicked out of a LARP because I complained about their atrocious character selection system. I will spare you the gossip, although I’m happy to tell the story and name the culprit in private settings. But in case you thought being a critic lacked risk, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair, I mean if missing a probably average LARP is despair-worthy.
And this is your regular reminder I love receiving your advice and reactions and recommendations, so don’t hesitate to email if there’s something you think I should know in the weird theater cosmos. And join me in doing things if they are of interest — remember it’s always better to do immersive, and especially BAD immersive, with friends, and you have one buddy locked in for almost anything you do on this list.
Enough babble. On to reviews and listings for all the little things on my very sensitive radar.
Immersive Reviews
I hit the Under the Radar/Exponential/Prototype trio of experimental theater/new media/opera festivals (respectively) pretty hard this year, so there’s a bunch of that as well as random other one-offs around the city.
Nothing Doing - This and the next two reviews are part of my festival review round up on NoPro, but the short version is Nothing Doing is a Dadaist clown show in the sense that it kind of has no fixed message or structure. It’s a chance for Alex Tartarsky to throw a crazy, chaotic, comedy work-in-progress at you. It’s very work-in-progress; some parts absolutely missed the mark. But there were some brilliant skits too, including one very meta physical gag that could have been a whole show on its own. Tartarsky is great at what they do and held the audience’s focus even when the show missed the mark. Be sure to look out for them for more polished stuff in the future.
The Search for Power - Longer review here, but The Search for Power is a terrific idea on a great theme that could use a bit more workshopping. An immersive documentary exploring why Lebanon has had rolling blackouts for decades, The Search for Power is a fascinating and painful story of colonial abuse and greed tied together with a beautiful set (you’re sitting as a guest at a banquet table) and a great structure ending in a dance party you actually want to dance at — no small feat in the immersive world. But the writing and performances were a bit loose and clunky. It really felt like the whole thing needed a couple more edits and rehearsals to land. It’s a great concept though and I would love to see a more polished version of it.
Bardo/Black Lodge - One last link back to the reviews. Bardo was the immersive opening night to the Black Lodge live-opera/70 minute music video. As an immersive intro, it was pretty stunning. Set as a gallery of five different vignettes and interactions with a hellish inner world, Bardo was visually striking and aesthetically consistent. There was an MC who riffed on people’s desires and regrets for over an hour, a writer’s room/torture space that was rivetting, and a slow choreography piece straight out of Silent Hill. Black Lodge itself was impressive if bloated — the music was a great opera/death metal mashup and the production quality of the film was just unbelievable, but so much was happening with the video that it distracted from the great live musical performance. Still, this is an immersive newsletter and on that front, Bardo killed it.
Dream Roulette - An experiment by the great minds of Houseworld Immersive, Dream Roulette takes you into a lucid dream as you interact with surreal characters and take part in unexplained interactive moments. It’s a really interesting experiment in being able to wander through and interact with actors in a themed space. It doesn’t feel totally right in its setting — you really want a more deeply and bespokenly designed space for a piece like this — but that’s the nature of the experiment. What I liked is the way the work had a surface level that was entertaining to watch, but then had deeper interactions if you pushed it to go deeper. And of course, it’s Houseworld, so there were interesting musical and ritual elements. It’s early and there’s work to do, but it’s not a bad experiment to check out if you’re interested in how agency and theater can collide.
Christopher’s Birthday Picnic - A LARP-in-progress by Kate Conover and Orli Nativ, you are cast as one of the characters of Winnie-the-Pooh, but if you were a real group of friends living in the build up and through World War 2. Christopher, the center of your group, dies at the very end of the war, and you are gathering for his annual birthday picnic to honor him. Conover and Nativ have a good theme and good structure for this game. The way the development of the war weaves through the characters’ stories is striking and powerful. It’s still being developed and there are some pacing elements that need improvement, but if sad LARPs are up your alley, it’s a wonderful game for exploring sudden grief and not-so-sudden disappointment.
Venhue - This immersive theme restaurant bills itself as the not-pretentious fine dining experience and on at least that level it works. It’s a tasting menu for about $120 and if you’re into that kind of thing, it’s on par. The food is generally weird and good, with maybe the best single bite of Waygu beef I’ve ever had and by and large solidly interesting courses. On the immersive side, your mileage may vary. Half of our group of four loved it; the other half (including me) thought it was too scattered. There are screens on the wall showing AI generated imagery related to the food and the staff does bits where the typical fine dining experience is disrupted. Maybe you’re blindfolded for a part of the meal, or maybe the plating is odd and you eat in a strange way, or maybe there’s a monologue by the sommelier. None of these things were bad, but there were just too many different ideas. Are you telling a long joke about getting a Michelin star? That’s great, but why do I need a horse race? Or screens showing fake famous people eating? Or a joke about wine culture? Venhue is a good restaurant with some interesting moments, but it really needs to pick a lane and stick to it.
Wish Tree - Yoko Ono had an art piece up at the Park Avenue Armory where the entire hanger is filled with dwarf trees and you could write a wish on a card and tie it to one of them. Yup. That’s it. I really respect Ono as an artist, but there is simply nothing interesting about this piece at all. Thank your local critic for wasting 15 minutes on that trite nonsense so you didn’t have to.
Temporary Occupant - A remount of a solo immersive piece from four years ago, Temporary Occupant is a meditation on the inauguration of the US President that gives you a chance to speak for a minute about your feelings about the country. In the original version (mounted under COVID), you did this by yourself in an isolated experience; now you do it in a crowd of people where you listen to everyone give their opinion. It’s a taste thing, but I kind of despise this user-generated content work. That said, as a metaphor for democracy, listening to like 50 people’s one minute take on the election is a pretty good symbol for what our system of government is. It resolves in a quiet pretty moment where a chorus rises from the crowd and sings a healing song, and then the audience gets to be inaugurated en masse to whatever personal role they want. This piece wasn’t for me, but I’ll hand it to the creators that they brought some simple immersive staging to it and as somewhat cheesy interactive rituals go, the elements were well considered and thoughtfully designed.
Upcoming Immersive Work
Like I said above, lots of shows to check out if you’re interesting in the high-risk, high-reward world of small-scale immersive.
Lore - Part of a quarterly series of part-party, part-show events (their term of choice is “sharty”), Lore this month is a take on Little Red Riding Hood. The credits list a narrator/DJ, supporting DJs, and performers, so I’m thinking this is a dance party with sonic and light installations and some choreographed bits thrown in. I have seen a number of these in my immersive research life and the hit ratio is not great in this form, but it’s cheap at about $30 so I figure it’s worth looking at. It’s on Saturday, February 22nd if dancing in a fairy-tale is up your alley.
Fight Back - A LARP-like interactive theater piece, Fight Back casts you as a real world person who attended a March 19th, 1989 Act Up meeting New York meeting. There are no actors in the work; if you sign up, you are given a character who was actually there and you participate in the meeting in that role. There are no cell phones in 1989, so you either need to memorize the part or bring physical notes. It seems quite LARP-y in that you don’t have a script and you basically just improvise according to your goals. I’m always interested in LARP-adjacent theater stuff, so I’m doing it, but who knows if this structure will work or if it’s even a good idea to try to re-create this event. It’s a sliding scale price ($25 if you can pay it) on February 24th at 7pm.
A Eulogy for Roman - A Drama Desk Award nominated piece for Unique Theatrical Experience, this play follows Milo as he tries to give a eulogy for his friend Roman. As the ceremony gets unexpectedly difficult, the audience is recruited to assist. I don’t have a lot more information on this one, but it sounds experimentally interesting and that’s what I research. It’s got a long run (Feb 22nd to April 6th) and tickets are $30. I’m going to buy a ticket by the end of this week; let me know if you’re interested and we can coordinate.
The Factory (sneak peek) - The Factory is going to be a new immersive show about Andy Warhol’s famous studio/hangout space. This is not that show; this is a preview of that show presenting selected scenes to test them. I’m definitely interested in the full show, but I’m happy to wait until it’s already workshopped. However, if you want to get a sneak peak of an upcoming immersive, you can get tickets for the February 20th show at 7:30 for $35.
If Walls Could Talk - Visit the Gallery of Living Secrets in this period set immersive theater piece by RJ Theatre. A real-estate agents guides you through rooms where you can hear the stories of the characters who live there and even offer a confession of your own. This is a one day thing running on March 1st, where you can get a ticket for $57 dollars (or up to $80 with drinks) or you might have only the evening slot open on your schedule (like I did) and get the 7:30 VIP experience of $128. These roving performance pieces are hit-or-miss, but we don’t get many of them, so I’m biting. Let me know if you’ll be there that day too.
There you have it. More little stuff is popping up all the time, but I’ll be here to scour the dark and bring it to light for you. Let me know what your explorations turn up.