Review: Assemble

A walk through a retail store becomes a meditation on life

(Note: Assemble is an unauthorized immersive performance; we were asked to not reveal the secret location before the last week of the New York City run. If you don’t want any spoilers, do refrain from reading the second half of this review).  

Photo courtesy Assemble

Are you truly happy with your life? Do you look back with no regret at all about the choices you’ve made? Do you feel certain about the direction in which your life is headed? 

If you had to pause even for a moment to think about these questions, chances are you will enjoy Assemble, a guerilla site-specific audio performance, currently running in Brooklyn as a part of the Exponential Festival. If you found yourself slowly spiraling into an existential crisis by answering those questions, you are already halfway to getting into the mindset of Jane, the character through whose eyes Assemble is experienced. 

Jane is a New Yorker turning forty and, as many of us do around milestone anniversaries, she is assessing her life. The way that she does it is rather unconventional. With the help of an AI assistant, she navigates a famous big box store, revisiting her memories and dreams. The audience members are invited to tag along, to reflect on their own life and to walk in Jane’s shoes for a part of the way. What does it mean to be a woman in a megapolis approaching forty? What are the choices laid out in front of her? And when she makes a choice, is it a manifestation of her true self or a mixture of cultural expectations and the influence of brand marketing? In a way, we all ask ourselves these questions at some point, which is why it’s so easy to relate to Jane.               

The Assemble experience is provided via a smartphone app (developed by David Blackman) downloaded onto one’s phone. A series of short audio tracks take the listener through various locations in the store, occasionally throwing in narrative “forks”: by clicking on a picture of an object on your screen, you can choose your own adventure. You might be asked to record a voice memo, write something down, take a photo, or draw a picture. There are some tasks involving interacting with the store environment and manipulating objects on display. I felt somewhat uneasy performing the latter. Although the tasks weren’t asking for anything that might be too embarrassing, as soon as they went outside the lines of normal behavior expected from customers, I found myself hesitating if there was a staff member visible.                

Prior to entering the store, I listen to the audio waiver, informing me that Assemble wasn’t exactly  authorized by the store, but it wasn’t exactly  forbidden, either. I am warned that if at any point in my experience, I am approached by a staff member and they ask what I am doing, it’s best to say I am conducting research. 

Feeling a little bit like a spy trespassing on enemy territory, I feel especially wary of my appearance and my behavior.  My brain is in full “panopticon” mode when it is time to perform a “strange” action. But this mode I’m in only makes the moments of quiet listening that much sweeter because I know The Big Brother is unable to hear what's in my headphones, unable to enter Jane’s thoughts, and, therefore, unable share our experience.  

Besides her name and her age, I don’t get many facts about Jane. There is enough here to get an idea of what she is like. But at the same time, writers Talya Chalef and Jess Kauffman leave enough gaps so that I can  fill in the blank parts with my own thoughts and experiences, making Jane feel very relatable. When the app prompts me to reflect on something, I sometimes hear Jane’s thoughts in my headphones, but sometimes space is left for my own reflections. Other people and noises enter the mosaic soundscape during Assemble, the density of which varies greatly. There are times when our AI guide is practically attacking me with questions and tasks, while  there are also quiet, meditative moments.     

(Spoilers regarding the exact location of the experience follow.)         

                      

The AI guide in the app who directs me through the experience is named Sigrid. Using  her cheery voice with a Scandinavian accent, she takes me through the IKEA showroom in Red Hook. Somewhere in between a shopping assistant and a life coach, Sigrid is here to entertain, educate, and sell various scenarios of a perfect life (which, of course, can be obtained through buying goods from IKEA). 

My journey goes through fully assembled and decorated rooms with names like “The home is where the heart is” and “A passion for things.”  As I lie on the beds, pull out drawers, and sit at tables, I imagine myself living in similar life-sized doll houses, the kind which are neatly designed for small city apartments. Audio scenes bring the mock apartments alive, but, at the same time, these scenes make them feel sad and hollow, like the artificial plants used for decorating these rooms. I stand in the middle of a housewarming party where the host, Pete, brags about his kitchen appliances. In another scene, I hear a confused dad reading instructions aloud on how to insert a tampon. I lay down on a bed and, as I start giving into the calming music, I hear the snoring of an invisible person next to me. The same way as I “try on” a STJÄRNTULPAN duvet cover or try sitting in a ÖRFJÄLL chair, I try on roles of a bohemian New Yorker, a parent, and a spouse.                   

An IKEA store organically lends itself to an “dark ride”-like narrative with a predetermined route charted through various “sets.” It already feels like a life-sized version of The Game of Life with arrows on the floor pointing towards your next destination: workspace; kitchen; nursery. It is a brilliant idea to build Assemble on top of existing infrastructure, by re-thinking and re-appropriating the context of a store like IKEA. The fact that the immersive production is operating in complete secrecy from the venue underlines its political agenda to criticise consumerism and patriarchy. Assemble also tackles another interesting topic, namely how the arts serve commerce. In a way it is an “immersive brand de-activation” despite having no direct attacks on IKEA in its content.

Assemble is a playful, tasteful, and profound invitation to take a look behind the cardboard facade of the catalog-ready dreams imposed on us by brands.    It is a straightforward and unapologetic criticism of the modern, super-achiever culture that demands “high performance” in everything: career, marriage, raising offspring, and decorating your apartment. But this criticism is brought to the participant’s ears as a “contraband” — a lot of these insights only hit me later on. Assemble is never aggressive or accusatory; somehow, the show manages to be fun and relaxing but also raise some serious questions at the same time.

(This review was published on NoProscenium.com on January 26)

Review: In Many Hands

Kate McIntosh reminds us of the value of caring for one another

(This review contains moderate spoilers for the experience.)

BAM’s Next Wave Festival in 2019, under its new artistic director David Binder, was arguably the most successful one in recent years, in no small measure thanks to a number of shows in experimental and immersive formats such as User Not Found. Another piece in the Next Wave festival, In Many Hands, had a way-too-brief run but demonstrated to me the value of play and curiosity; it is an intimate communal theatrical experience focusing on how we interact with objects and each other. Merging performance, interactivity and art installation, the creator of the piece, Kate McIntosh, a New Zealand-born, Brussels-based artist works in the areas of physical engagement of the audience using objects and creating social spaces for exploring one’s agency and engaging in experimentation collectively.

In Many Hands. Photo by Ed Lefkowicz.

The artist herself, with a serene and quiet demeanor, greets the audience of 51 people gathered in the lower lobby of BAM’s Fisher building. Prior to the beginning of the show, we are asked to remove all the objects and jewelry from our hands. Divided into three groups, we are led to one of three tin basins located throughout the theater filled with warm soapy water to wash our hands. The instructions (roll up your sleeves, refrain from speaking during the show, try to sit next to somebody you don’t know) are delivered by one of the facilitators in the same friendly, placative manner. A tin basin with a black towel tied to it is a mundane domestic object, but a spotlight above it and the anticipation of the unknown elevate the experience of simply washing my hands. This meditative, nearly ritualistic onboarding sets the mood of the experience. After the “ceremony of purification” backstage, I enter the theater and it feels like a temple.

The seats and the stage normally found here are gone. Instead, there are three long tables set in a triangle shape, covered in stark white cloth, in the middle of the darkened black box theater. There is a line of stools facing outwards. I take my seat towards one of the ends of the table, between two strangers. Mimicking the action of others, I put my elbows and arms on the white cloth lit with a spotlight. Soon, I notice that there is a long paper ribbon traveling towards me, passing through all the hands of the people at the table, kind of like a comically-long telegram strip. When it comes to me, it reads something like “Notice the hands of the person next to you. Are they trembling, are they calm? Are they hot or cold”?

I look around and then something else starts traveling down the line of hands, a series of gestures. Imagine the game “telephone” but instead of whispering a phrase down the line of players, the facilitator does something with the hand of a person next to them and the action cascades down to the end of the table. It is intimidating at first to hold or to tickle the hand of a stranger, but a certain level of anonymity during In Many Hands helps. We end up forming an unbroken chain, where my right hand is resting face up in the left hand of the person to the right of me, and my left hand is holding the right hand of a person on my left. My right palm can’t lie flat because of a previously existing injury and my neighbor’s hand is trembling, so it takes a moment to adjust to each other’s physicality and overcome the initial awkwardness. But by the end of act one, I feel a strong personal connection to my two neighbors without sharing a single word and very few gazes. (But I am getting ahead of myself.)

Once all the hands are linked, objects are passed down from the beginning of the line by the facilitator (and a second facilitator is discarding the objects by putting them into a box at the end). First, there is a parade of rocks passing through our hands, all without a single instruction. Rocks of different shapes and sizes, I feel each of them with my right hand and study closely the most interesting ones, handing them to my neighbor on the left afterward. At some point, the facilitator at the end stops discarding rocks, leaving each person holding one. Somebody gets to hold a miniature nugget the size of a baby’s pinky nail, somebody else gets a broad and flat rock, a pumice stone, or a nearly perfectly spherical pebble.

When a massive cobblestone travels my way, I hold my breath knowing that that one is going to end in my not-so-functional hand. My right-hand neighbor catches me looking and silently offers to switch my load with his, but I smile and shake my head no. Before putting the beast onto my fragile palm, he flexes his palm underneath mine, and, after waiting for my nod, slowly releases it, while continuing to provide steady support. It feels like somebody is willing to take on some of the weight I carry, metaphorically speaking, because physically, of course, the cobblestone wasn’t that big of a challenge. And after this simple act of consideration and care from a stranger, I am already sold on In Many Hands.

In a nutshell, this is the performance: objects are being passed down by the strangers in silence. After we complete the rocks, various botanical, zoological, anatomical specimens and various tools and substances of different natures travel down the chain of hands. But don’t let the simplicity of the structure deter you. Puzzling at first, In Many Hands’ unexpectedly turns rewarding in a lot of ways.

As In Many Hands progresses, the mood gets increasingly playful and giddy. Bursts of laughter and gasps of surprise are heard throughout the room. Participants invent new, creative ways of handing the objects over, experimenting with presentation and facilitating the experience for each other. Although you see the object that you are about to receive, once you touch it, it often feels like handling something for the first time. Suddenly, its weight, its temperature, and its smell reveal themselves with an unexpected newness.

When a handful of large cold seaweed leaves plops down on my hand, much like a dead fish, I giggle in surprise. Thinking that it might be fun to provide my neighbor on the left with a more relaxing, spa-like experience, I pick up each cold seaweed leaf individually from my hand and carefully assemble them on his hand and his arm. He chuckles at first and after the leaves are in place, sits still for a while, taking it all in. During the onboarding, we were told that it will take different people different amounts of time to complete the tasks. Some of the experiences, the seaweed in particular, call for relishing and I am glad we are given time not to rush.

In Many Hands proves an opportunity to meditatively study various objects with multiple senses (except for taste). The objects are the same for everybody for the most part, except for some finer substances that transform as they travel down the line of many hands. When a scoop of soap-like liquid appears in my palm, I am not quite sure what to make of it: much of it was spilled in transition, and the color is mudded with other solids and liquids that everybody held prior to this. A magnifying glass appears in my hand and I study the hand of a person next to me: covered in brown goo, smelling of soap and coffee. My hands smell the same even after I wash them. For part two, I am instructed to take a seat at a different table, facing inwards this time.

Part two starts in a similar manner, but soon the lights dim down and the objects travel through the hands of the audience in complete darkness. Through my hands pass various objects of peculiar texture, some produce sounds (such as when we rustle and tear out pages from a telephone book). Suddenly, the crescendo of the show begins. As much as I would like to share it, I don’t want to spoil the surprise. The joyful chaos of play takes over, with laughter and screams of surprise filling the room. It gets loud and we momentarily become one with the environment and with each other. And then it suddenly stops. The monumental yet quite finale keeps us in our seats, absolutely mesmerized for several minutes. There is no curtain call. People look at each other from across the room, smiling. Nobody wants to leave just yet, but one of the stagehands opening the door and thanking everybody for coming is a clear sign that we need to vacate the room. I feel a childish disappointment that our “playtime” is over.

In Many Hands made me think about how the participants can “serve” each other during an immersive experience. This intimate, interactive show requires the audience members to pay constant attention to their partners, to be able to read them without speaking or seeing them, a skill that is certainly much needed today if we want to maintain our humanity and survive as a species in the long run. In Many Hands explicitly doesn’t reveal an overarching theme nor does it make any moralistic conclusions. But, to me, it is a history of our planet and human civilization told through objects, closed on a haunting and poetic note. We are all responsible for our collective future; it is, after all, in many hands.

(This review was published on noproscenium.com on January 10)

Review: A Christmas Carol

An annual No.11 Productions’ Christmas immersive party finds new ways to reconnect modern audiences with Dickens’ classic.

For the fourth consecutive year No.11 Productions took the good old Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol, out of the trunk of seasonal necessities and, after dusting and tweaking it a bit, performed it for one night only at the Irondale Center in Brooklyn. This was my first time attending, and I felt the atmosphere of joyful unity right upon entering the grand space of the former Sunday School. Friends saying hello to each other, children running around, and a few volunteer audience members trying on costumes off to the side; everything is reminiscent of a big family gathering. 

Steven Conroy, and Forest Vandyke in A Christmas Carol. Photo by Nate Bertone.

For about forty minutes of pre-show, audience members are ushered to the gallery upstairs where plentiful pastries and tangerines are arranged on little tables, and a bar serves two kinds of punch. The play itself begins after director Ryan Emmons makes his welcoming speech, a transition that might be required but actually works for the “family party” format.

No. 11 Productions’ A Christmas Carol is in a sense a promenade piece. Each scene takes place in a different part of the room, sometimes erupting right in the middle of the crowd. Trying to guess in which corner the next dialogue will occur—and then making it there in time—becomes a fun game. Besides not knowing where the actors will appear next, the rare but joyful moments of interaction with the cast keep the audience on its toes. After being startled by Marley’s chains rattling and then invited for a Victorian line dance, I had no idea what to expect; to my pleasure, A Christmas Carol kept surprising again and again.

The wonderful cast performed with such contagious sincerity that I soon found myself seated cross-legged on the floor with all the kids, latching onto every single line with the excitement of somebody who is hearing this story for the first time. Forest VanDyke as Ebenezer Scrooge, a grumpy penny-pincher who changes his ways overnight, is especially good at taking us on this journey of spiritual rebirth and transformation. Another unforgettable performance is by Sequoia, a magnificent Ghost of Christmas Present in drag. She transforms the venue into a dance floor for the duration of her number, leading the crowd into a dance accompanied by live music by the Nat Osborn Band (who gives a concert as an after-party).

The volunteer audience members who play some of the smaller roles add a lot of flavor to this production. Others in the audience root for the shy performers who can barely make it through their two lines like proud parents at an elementary school performance. The audience roars with laughter and applause for the beloved recurring characters, like Tiny Tim, performed by a 6-foot guy leaning on a crutch that barely comes up to his knee.

No.11 Productions' A Christmas Carol is a wonderful holiday tradition that will cheer up anybody’s spirits. The company manages to combine superb professional performances with an endearing amateur theatre vibe. So make sure to have your dancing shoes ready for next year!

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A Christmas Carol plays at Irondale Center, 85 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn, on December 16, 2019. The running time was 90 minutes with no intermission. Tickets were $30. For more information visit no11productions.com.

A Christmas Carol is by Charles Dickens, adapted and produced by No.11 Productions. Directed by Ryan Emmons. Associate Director is Ryan Buchanan. Original Music and Sound Design by Enrico de Trizio. Additional Music by Nat Osborn. Set and Lighting Design by Ryan Hauenstein. Puppetry and Prop Design by Jen Neads and Danny Tieger. Costume Design by Kathleen Blanchard and Julie Congress. 

The cast is Forest Vandyke, Steven Conroy, Julie Congress, Alison, Novelli, and Giselle Chatelain.

(This review was published on theasy.com on 12.27.19)

Review: Judgment Day

A German play about pack mentality written in the 1930s strikes with its relevance in this grandiose production.

The Park Avenue Armory is one of my favorite theatre venues in New York for its iconic yet flexible Wade Thompson Drill Hall and edgy programming. Judgment Day, an adaptation of a 1937 play by Ödön von Horvath, is a perfect example of both. Director Richard Jones returns after the critically acclaimed The Hairy Ape, which played the Armory in 2017, this time with an even more spectacular production.

The cast of Judgment Day. Photo by Stephanie Berger

The events take place in 1933, in a small unnamed town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Express trains pass the little town without even slowing down, comically pushing the citizens against the tall blank wall of the railway station. The loud rumbling (sound design by Drew Levy) and bright silhouettes of the windows swooshing by (lighting design by Mimi Jordan Sherin) make the figures look two-dimensional. The same can be said about the majority of the citizens, restlessly gossiping and vigorously bullying any “black sheep.”

The stationmaster, Thomas Hudetz (Luke Kirby), finds himself first the local hero, and then a victim of the community judgment, after a fatal accident that killed eighteen people. The train derailing caused by an untimely signaling unfolds right in front of our eyes. The stationmaster’s reputation of “a diligent official” (as he calls himself on multiple occasions) was nearly his only pride, and is now at risk. Both witnesses, the innkeeper’s daughter Anna (Susannah Perkins) and the stationmaster’s wife Frau Hudetz (Alyssa Bresnahan), become equally unhappy for covering up and revealing the truth, respectively. The decisions that the main characters have to make take them out of the two-dimensional realm and put them on a wild rollercoaster ride that becomes progressively surreal.

Although coming to terms with one’s guilt is at the core of Judgment Day, it seems like Jones is equally preoccupied with the conflict between the individual and the mob. (Mirroring the fate of the stationmaster, Frau Hudetz and her brother, druggist Alfons (Henry Stram), also fall in and out of favor with the townsfolk.) The director masterfully depicts the nuances of confrontational relationships, not only through the mise-en-scène, but also the transitions, when the group of citizens, under Anjali Mehra's movement direction, silently walks across the stage, evoking a pack of wild animals thirsty for blood.

These elaborately staged transitions also allow the repositioning of the two monumental plywood pieces of scenery, reminiscent of children’s building blocks (set design by Paul Steinberg). The choreography of these blocks (there isn’t a better word to characterize these mesmerizing movements) and the de-individualized, nearly de-humanized mob rushing across the stage, create a beautiful dance that evokes the scale of an individual in comparison to history. Reminded of another monumental piece seen in the Park Avenue Armory, Everything That Happened and Would Happen, I was hypnotized by the majestic grandeur of the scenery brought to life with bold and vigorous lighting design and the abundance of haze. But at the same time, I was taken aback by the fear of the gathering crowds, rising to power and crushing anybody who doesn’t comply with their standards, no matter how outrageous.

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Judgment Day plays at the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, through January 11, 2020. The running time is 1 hour 30 minutes with no intermission. Performances are Mondays through Thursdays at 7:30; Fridays at 8; and Saturdays at 2 and 8. Tickets are $55, $95, $145, and $195, and are available at armoryonpark.org or by calling 212-933-5812.

Judgment Day is by Ödön von Horváth. Adapted by Christopher Shinn. Directed by Richard Jones. Movement Direction by Anjali Mehra. Set Design by Paul Steinberg. Lighting Design by Mimi Jordan Sherin. Music and Sound Design by Daniel Kluger. Sound Design by Drew Levy. Costume Design by Antony McDonald. Stage Manager is Janet Takami.

The cast is Luke Kirby, Susannah Perkins, Alyssa Bresnahan, Henry Stram, Alex Breaux, Charles Brice, Cricket Brown, Gina Daniels, Harriet Harris, Maurice Jones, Maurice Jones, Tom McGowan, George Merrick, Jason O’Connell, Joe Wegner, and Jeena Yi.

(This review was published on theasy.com on 12/20/19)