Image above: “Rent” produced by Jaxxx Theatricals (phot by Corran Villalobos)
Sometimes, An Audience Just Wants to Sit in the Dark
A New Critic Yearns for the Old School: A Case Against Interactive Theater
By Molly McClean
Author Molly McClean (Photo courtesy of Molly McClean)
This article is part of the Stage Raw/Unusual Suspects Youth Journalism Program
RENT is a musical that premiered on Broadway in 1996. It was a pop culture phenomenon, a protest play which humanized people living with HIV/AIDS. The production at Jaxx Theatricals (now closed) was meant to feel like an active, immersive experience. The actors wandered around before the show started, some talking to patrons in character. “Hey, what’s your name?” “Are you going to Maureen’s show later?” There were few seats in the theater, two rows on one side and one on the other of the alley stage. On the opposite ends of the rectangle were the live orchestra and a faux brick wall with graffiti on it.
The choreography by Jeremy Lucas was effective in creating an energetic, immersive show (associate choreographer: Jill Marie Burke). The characters often moved towards us, pivoted to face the opposite audience, and made lots of eye contact with us. (Lucas was also the director and choreographer, which makes the whole piece feel integrated and clear.)
Few of the actors seemed relaxed enough to have fun, as though they’re stressed out, even when they were meant to be flirting or celebrating. The actors’ voices were quiet, their choices small. The principal actor that seemed to have the most fun was Hannah Staudinger. In the ensemble, Amare Perkins, Isaac Council, and Kiera Morris all exuded fun energy. One could argue, these characters are all poor and many dying, why are they celebrating? Well, that is the point of the show: these characters choose love and joy over despair.
There were very few gestures in this production. The movement mostly consists of pelvic thrusts or similarly edgy gestures. Where were the gestures to underscore even simple phrases while they sing, to help the audience along? The actors spoke quietly, perhaps thinking their microphones were doing the work. There was no set, since the small, immersive stage was constantly changing. Thus, audiences who had no previous idea of the plot were likely confused.
Hannah Staudinger in “RENT” (Photo by Corran Villalobos)
“I find myself longing for theater that doesn’t look me in the eye.”
A 30-minute westward walk from Jaxx Theatricals (on Oxford Avenue) down Santa Monica Boulevard gets you to New Theater Hollywood. The show there, Psalm’s Trust Vol. 2, began with a distressed woman wearing a bloody shirt. This was the protagonist, Blessing, portrayed by the piece’s creator, Klein (sic).
She spoke about some kind of tragedy she was not responsible for. A family who did not understand her. Addiction to alcohol. The setting, character, relationships, and objectives were undefined. What was clear was the subject mesmerizing Blessing on the TV: Black British pop culture. The two large screens show podcasts, reality TV, music videos, sermons, movies, news segments, and other snippets of 21st century media. Most involved high-drama situations, like fighting, mourning, or gossiping. Occasionally, while these clips played on one screen, on the other or behind it, Blessing, delivered a monologue, mostly incoherently.
All of a sudden, a character, supposedly an audience member trying to go to the onstage bathroom, stopped, turned and spoke to the audience about everyday, off-the-cuff wisdom. She was like an aunt ranting in the kitchen while something boils. This character, “big interlude,” (played by Bee-Be Smith) provided a welcome break from the use of screens. Her scene was the only theatrical thing that happened in the show.
(The show was originally developed at 2022 residency in Rome, and is guided by Klein’s former work on British TV shows, including children’s television programming and reality game shows as a runner, then transcriber, researcher, and logger.)
Klein has utilized a lack of plot in much of her previous work. She said to Fact Magazine, “When it’s about to reach the crescendo, I just take it away. I feel like life is building up to a crescendo that you’re never going to get to, so it makes sense doing that in art and music.” In this way, she was quite successful. The crowd as we rose from our seats all felt as though their brows were furrowed. The piece was marketed as “a sitcom-in-progress nestled within a soap opera.” I saw the sitcom element through the character of “big interlude.” (Her character goes up on stage from the audience, rambles about life, giving the feeling of a pleasant, inoffensive life lesson like on network TV. The soap opera I could see through Blessing’s terror and addiction.)
The main element of this piece, however, the screens, was not theatrical, it was cinematic. The videos were the closest to the audience and constituted the majority of the run time. Klein’s editing and curatorial skills remind me of a video piece I saw by Jay Weingarten at the Elysian, where he had edited together dozens of videos of men doing Fight Club monologues from YouTube. These pieces where artists make sense of the digital world through live performances are fun, because we often spend our time watching these videos alone and it can feel pleasurable to experience them together.
Most of the play feels like an art installation, something you can wander through at a gallery or a museum. Klein has done many works at art galleries. Psalm’s Trust Vol. 2 might work better for me as an installation. In a gallery, the viewer has more time and agency to wander around and think actively. Sitting in a theater, unable to move, can be freeing, but only if the performance gushes over you. If I am going to sit for an hour, I prefer who, what, where, and when to be clear. Psalm did not earn my stillness.
These two productions have a few elements in common. First, audience interaction: RENT has audience participation before the show begins. The characters are meant to surround us so we feel that we are in “the end of the millennium.” In Psalm’s Trust, “big interlude” comes from out of the audience to present her monologue. Her character is meant to feel like one of us, a crowd member excited to share her epiphanies. Both of these felt to me like a tired convention. Perhaps this interactivity is meant to engage the audience, as if we’re being greeted by mascots at a theme park, but it ultimately feels hackneyed. These performers are not Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. The actors did not make the interaction worthwhile.
The other similarity between these two pieces is a hesitant approach to gesture and theatricality as a whole. Actors in both shows rely on their voices to convey all meaning. In a show like RENT, which has many words flying, it is important to use gesture to emphasize meaning. Use all resources available to you to get us to understand the plot and characters. The actors’ timidity and small performances undercut the theatricality of the piece. In Psalm, Klein’s acting was all voice. Using her body more would have helped us to understand the circumstances, the stakes, as well as shift this multimedia gallery piece to the theater. Both performances remind me more of ritual than theater. In RENT, this is because of the loud music with a sentimental plot. In Psalm, this means hypocritical, suffering women transfixed by men who promise something greater.
Overall, the wide pit that traditionally separates the audience from the stage is not present in these shows. These productions have no interest in maintaining the fourth wall, and shy away from theatrical conventions. They are desperate for audience members’ attention: they peer through to us and want to look us in the eyes so we will see how sad they are, how they long for something else, something better than this. But I find myself longing for theater that doesn’t look me in the eye. I long for theater that upholds at least some of the conventions that are, god forbid, theatrical. I am impatient with productions where the actors are watching me, often winking and breaking the fourth wall. Can I have a quiet moment to meditate in the dark audience? Can I see a show, a real, entertaining show, that does not feel the need to constantly reassure me? I would like to see that. Above all, I would like to see shows that are proud of being theatrical: an intact fourth wall and over-the-top gestures.
Both shows are closed.
