#immersivenyc

Starring Mallory Gracenin (Evelyn), Austin Goodwin (Teddy), Paul Corning (definitely not John Lindsay), and Lilin Lace (of Company XIV).

It’s time for immersive fans to give back.

Immersive theater lays bare our need and longing for authentic human connection. NYC’s eclectic galaxy of immersive theater productions has entertained and moved millions of audience members. From intimate experiences built for one person to six-story buildings built for 400 guests, in candle-lit closets, reimagined historic buildings, and surreal fantasy landscapes sealed into old warehouses, immersive shows help us connect to our deeper truths. Today, however, the people who lovingly made these experiences a reality for us are struggling.

I’m supposed to be finishing up work and instead it’s 12:25 am and somehow 2020 keeps getting worse and worse and I can’t focus on anything productive and I’m just sitting here alone while my family sleeps. And I’m thinking about immersive theatre.

For someone who is fairly gregarious on the internet--I’ve written about my sex life and liveblogged my pregnancy for publication, after all--I’m a surprisingly guarded person IRL. I don’t see crying as a sign of weakness in others, but I can’t convince myself of the same. I only really trust one or two people in my life at a time. That’s all I have capacity for. I’m an adoptee. I’m a Capricorn. It’s who I am.

I miss the hotel right now and immersive theatre in general. What’s hard to explain to most people is that it’s not just about the art and the live performance. Maybe it’s about the community, though I ironically see my far-flung fan friends more often now than I did before the pandemic shut down theater. We’re all desperate for immersive work and have been seeing virtual shows together and apart, having Zoom chats and group chats and debriefs about them, sharing reviews and solving clues collectively.

I do miss people and IRL connection, but that’s not the ache I feel most ardently. I accessed something within myself in immersive shows that I can’t replicate anywhere else. Is transcendence too strong of a word? It felt spiritual, but I also don’t know if I know what spirituality means. Immersive was (is?) a solo experience for me, whether I went with someone else or not. I felt alive and present in my body at immersive shows. I’m always thrilled to have a 1-1 or to see a new scene added at Sleep No More. But it’s the much smaller moments and experiences that swoooooosh returned me to my flesh. And I miss that feeling, of being transported. The illusion of being alone in my head, that allowed me to focus on just what was in front of me, just what I wanted and who I was in the moment. Since becoming a parent, I both started seeing more and more immersive shows beyond SNM and had less frequent trips to NYC to see shows at all. The last time I saw SNM was October of 2019, the Halloween trip. I haven’t been back to NYC since. I don’t remember who was on or what I saw or where I wandered. It wasn’t a deeply transformative trip to the McKittrick. I took it for granted and if I could go back today, I would try to take it all in--the scents, the textures, the million tiny details. Corners of the building are already blurring in my memories.

But I do remember some very specific things, teeny moments embedded in my long term memory from 7 years (6 in earnest) of immersive adventuring.

Some scattered memories from the last few years that I can still smell, hear, taste, and remember, from SNM and others:

Being alone in the lofted bedroom alcove at the very top of the brownstone building in which Inside the Wild Heart by Group.BR was performed and standing slightly too close to the wall, when I realized the flowers on the walls were talking. Barely audible audio of Clarice Lispector reading her work, like a whisper, was being played through the flowers pinned to the wall, so quiet and in such a small, lonely corner of the building. Who would hear them? Who would ever happen upon them or stand just close enough to that particular wall? But they called to me and I pressed my ear closer to the wall to hear their whispers.

Outright choke-sobbing during the last scenes of Remembrance by Linked Dance, a time during which I really wished I was alone and was also slightly embarrassed that I’d paid extra for the additional scenes that commenced while I was still gurgling and wiping my tears on my sleeve. My grandmother, who I was very close to, died after living a long time with Alzheimer’s. That show was so lovely and I held it together the entire time and then it all burst out at once and it’s truly the most emotional I’ve ever been in public that wasn’t, like, an actual funeral.

Reading through all the manila folders in the reverend’s outside room at SNM, when that was a thing, and puzzling over the characters in the files. Who was the midwife? The nanny? What about the others? Trying to commit it all to memory. Failing. Crawling through the tunnel and being shocked by the soft texture and brilliant white of the chapel (towel room).

The first time I felt the flutter of movement during my pregnancy with Remi, a slight ticklish wiggling inside me, so slight I barely registered it. Had I been moving about my normal life, I might not have noticed. I was, at that moment, deeply moved and completely still, witnessing the Father do a dance of regrets across a sandy roof in The Grand Paradise by Third Rail Projects. I don’t know if a fetus can register its gestational carrier’s emotions, but I have always felt that Remi was reacting to my heightened emotional state.

A night during which I was the only person with the porter during the boy witch lip sync. A scene I’d seen many times, but after looping this particular porter, I felt deeply empathetic towards him. He never took his eyes off of the boy witch and I never took my eyes off of him and he started to cry and I felt tears coming in the tightness of my throat. As though he could feel the synchronicity between us, without turning his fixed gaze from the boy witch, he reached his outstretched hand towards me across the desk. I’d seen the porter loop many times, so I was surprised, but I knew that it was meant for me and I didn’t hesitate to take it. We held hands, urgently, and those tears started to fall one-by-one down my face and then, when the boy witch was done, the porter shook the spell and looked me directly in the eyes, squeezing my hand before moving back to his unfortunate loop.

Watching an actor climb around a huge bookshelf, finding little pots of white paint behind the books and painting her face with her fingertips, while blue light cast unnatural shadows over the room--a scene you probably saw if you saw Submersive Productions’ first large-scale work in Baltimore, The Mesmeric Revelations of Edgar Allen Poe. What I remember is just watching her, as other audience members came and went, for a very long time, for the entire wordless scene, including when she dismounted from the shelves and folded her arms at odd angles into the top of a wooden piano.

The scene in Then She Fell by Third Rail Projects when Alice sees you through the mirror, the audience member becoming the mirror image of Alice. The actor spoke no words. We made eye contact through the implied mirror and she reached for the clementine on her side and I reached the one on mine and then we peeled it together, wordlessly, the skin giving easily under our fingers, and slipped one slice into our mouth and it was sweet.

And, of course, the very first SNM show and the very first time I saw the banquet scene. I have no idea what loop it was--maybe second? I didn’t comprehend anything about the show that night other than that I was intrigued. The banquet scene, which I so often skipped intentionally in my later shows, so often stayed out in the bar at the end of the night if I was having a good time, was the highlight of that very first show. It felt like the whole room slowed and warped. It stopped my breath. I was zoomed in. I could feel my pulse. The whole ballroom pulsed as the lights and mood shifted. For a moment, I was unstuck in time.

If you’re missing immersive theater right now, please do come to The Lost Halloween. It’s a moment for all of us to get found. A bit. And if you’re able, please give to the fundraiser. Every single dollar is an investment in another person's survival and a meaningful thank you for the ways immersive experiences have challenged us, affirmed us, and brought us joy and healing.

Halloween is almost upon us and if you are anything like we are, you are wallowing in sadness about a party that will not be. With all NYC theater closed for the foreseeable future it’s clear the McKittrick’s Halloween party is not happening. That said, all is not lost! 

Join us for the Lost Halloween show this year. Tickets will be available soon at no cost. What’s the catch? While there is cost for the tickets, we are asking people to contribute to this fundraiser instead. We realize some people may truly not be able to afford a show ticket right now and that’s OK. Many of us in the fan community are employed and able right now so we ask that those folks contribute generously. Take the money you would have spent on travel, show tickets, and party tickets and make a gift to the fundraising page. Theater is closed and will likely be one of the last sectors to open back up. Please support the people who have brought the worlds we all love to life in a time many of them are struggling to pay rent and buy groceries.

ALL funds raised will be given directly to NYC immersive performers and staff. 

Tell us what immersive theatre means to you!