There is a classic, memorable scene at the end of the movie Being John Malkovich where Lotte chases Maxine through the various chambers of John’s brain, literally stepping into his memories as they go. Theater Of The Mind reminded me a lot of that scene, except we traversed David Byrne’s head instead, lightly unpacked his childhood trauma, and experienced some really fun, science-based parlor tricks along the way.
With groups of 16 people stepping into the guided experience every 15 minutes, guests are strongly encouraged to arrive early for check-in. After storing bags and electronic devices in a bank of free lockers, the audience meet the group’s Experience Technician, whose purpose is to assist guests should any needs arise throughout the multi-sensory experience.
Walking through the first door, we were presented with a room full of more doors whose windows were conspicuously lit, yet totally unmarked. After some context-building by a heard-but-not-seen Byrne, the audience learned that we’d be attending his funeral. Then our Experience Technician helped us find our name tags but, curiously, the names were not our own.
As I tried to find a “Danielle” tag with no success, I couldn’t help but notice that these were unusually study nametags; hard plastic like a credit card with a strong removable magnet on the back.
Photo by Matthew DeFeo
After donning the name tags with mysterious names, we were given several minutes to go around the room and practice introducing ourselves to our fellow group members. This was effective at getting us to remember our new assigned names, which is important because there are a few points in the show where "you" may be called out and need to respond with a simple "Yes,” or some similar acknowledgment.
It is only after all this that we were ushered through one of the doors into a dimly lit, well-decorated, spacious funeral parlor.
After taking our seats, we met the spirit version of Bryne and, boy, was he ever happy to see so many familiar faces! As he walked among the audience and made eye contact with all the people from his past who thoughtfully attended his funeral, it brought back a lot of memories for him—many good, some bad, most faded or distorted over the course of time. (To be clear: the “Spirit Bryne” is one of the acting members of the company who has been cast to inhabit the role. Not an “actual” or a technologically achieved ghost.)
Overcome with emotion and nostalgia, our Spirit Byrne began to reflect heavily on that peculiarity—how our minds can play tricks, and how two people’s observations of the same event can have disparities. This would end up being the central theme of the components of the show that followed, as demonstrated to us eight different, highly interactive experiences based on scientific phenomena and optical illusions you may already be familiar with such as:
Woven throughout those eight experiences would be actual stories from Byrne’s past, told to us from inside his memories. At each of these major junctures in his life, with people present from that moment in time (that would be us, the audience), there would also be opportunity to reflect on how things were then, how they are now, and even what could have been done differently to yield a better outcome.
As I moved about the experience, I never saw or heard any other groups, which had a big impact on the overall immersive effect. Our Spirit Byrne was incredibly efficient at switching into “instruction mode” when they needed to temporarily break character to give us important instructions for a successful experience, such as how to adjust a VR headset, or what to expect during moments of total darkness.
Every new scene we stepped into was completely surprising and utterly world-shifting. The sets were stunning and exactly on par with what you would hope to see from a show with this kind of weight behind it. Without spoiling any of the fun details or surprises I can say:
- One experience was entirely in the dark for almost 10 minutes
- One experience involved taste (this one was my favorite and the most mind-bending)
- One experience made me feel physically VERY small
- One experience used VR
- My sense of smell was provoked multiple times (not overbearingly or offensively)
- My sight was affected more than once
If it all sounds like a bit of a stretch—to be reliving someone else’s memories, inside their head, with the goal to “make things right” where this person messed up—it definitely is. But that’s okay because there’s just enough there to hold on and lean in to. And while the stories themselves are disjointed (appropriately so, as they were generated from significant moments spanning Bryne’s life), the activities we participated in from each memory were very native to their environments.
The polish and details here all point to high-level work, so it's frustrating to say that at the end of the performance, I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to take away from it. I learned a lot about Bryne’s upbringing, and how he carried throughout his life the trauma of an absent mother. I participated in some really fun parlor tricks and then got a digital pamphlet with all the science that backs them up. But how or why those things tie together is still unclear to me.
The storyline kept going back to the internal battle Bryne seems to have fought all his life when it comes to making space in it for his mom, while simultaneously wanting to hold her accountable for her failures as a parent. When juxtaposed against the lighthearted, interactive fun the audience was having, it left me feeling a bit conflicted and confused. Did he ever patch things up with his mom? Was he able to heal because he tricked his mind like he tricked our minds tonight? Or was he always tricking his mind into believing she was a bad mother when maybe she really wasn’t? And did my crawling through his mind accomplish that for him?
Modern immersive creators and experienced audience members may be underwhelmed with certain aspects of the show (a lack of audience agency, cohesion between the story and the experience, the childlike nature of some of the science experiments). Yet Theater Of The Mind will be many attendee’s first immersive experience ever (and, frankly, some might not know what to do with agency if they had it). Many who see this show will never have experienced a roaming play or donned a VR headset. I’m a firm believer that a rising tide lifts all boats, and the high quality and professionalism of Theater Of The Mind will certainly have the net positive effect of piquing the general population’s interest in other immersive entertainment.
Theater of the Mind, by David Byrne & Mala Gaonkar and directed by Andrew Scoville, performs at York Street Yards in Denver, CO through December 18th. Tickets are $55-65.00.
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