Highlights from the LA Interactive Theatre scene
By Joanna Syiek (Director/Producer/Blogger)
Recently was asked to give a breakdown of what was happening in the interactive theatre realm over in LA and realized that the city's gotten spoiled lately with a number of good finds. Among the city's various companies, the following few definitely stand out from the crowd.
The Industry
Deconstructing opera’s mega-material roots is a challenge. Sharing an opera live with a group of roving wireless-headphone-wearing audience members? Sounds near impossible. And yet, The Industry ambitiously tackled all this and more through its Invisible Cities project in LA’s Union Station.
Composer and librettist Christopher Cerrone’s adapted a 1972 novel of the same name by Italo Calvino. The story depicts a host of fantastical cities the explorer Marco Polo narrates to Kublai Khan – unreal cities of desire, of memory, of the imagination.You check in and trade your license for a pair of headphones before following a drove of listeners into a large room where an orchestra sits, no singers in sight. The overture sounds forth and even before the final notes of this first movement end, individuals exit through the large glass doors to search for the rest of the opera. There’s no traditional stage here. The train station itself houses the characters, and like a living giant that seems to expand and contract as singers reveal themselves from the shadows.
The company also recently presented Hopscotch, billed as a "mobile opera" for 24 cars. Appropriately Los Angeles in its presentation, the show also offered elements to non-car viewers that weaved together the various stories from all over the city. The animations for the piece offered a glimpse at the tent-poles of the piece, for meditation before or after the experience.
Wilderness
The company's The Day Shall Declare It was said to be the piece that put LA on the immersive theatre map. And the show's intimate and intense quality certain made people take notice.
Four Larks
Four Larks also recently edged its way onto the scene with its "junkyard opera" The Temptation of St. Anthony. The stark white world took over a salon in Downtown Los Angeles, and welcomed visitors with an entrance beguiling enough for any bibliophile, littered with the pages of books half-revered, half-remembered.
JOANNA SYIEK is currently an American in Paris with a penchant for original theatre work, clean graphic design, and really good Indian food. She directs around the City of Angels and writes about nourishing creativity, Broadway favorites, and talent obsessions over on her blogging home. www.thoughtsontheatre.wordpress.com
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