Harlow Fowler — aka Ellena Doe and Gia Ingram — have been delighting NYC audiences with their monthly, themed, interactive and improvisational variety show Liminal Salon since last year. In fact, NoPro writer Blake Weil caught their dystopian corporate shindig Samsara Solutions Presents: The Successful Completion of the Catalyst Initiative/Phase 2 Office Party at the start of this year and declared it “surprising and nearly miraculous.”
This time around, the company has its sights set on something very different: with Liminal Salon is on hiatus, they’re hard at work developing a new, intimate, immersive theatre production called Rainier Falls. Participants in Rainier Falls will become guests at a party following the death of a friend’s odd, reclusive sister in a small, fictional Pacific Northwest town. Harlow Fowler describe the experience as being “funny, weird, and a bit sad.” It will play in NYC later this fall with a test version coming in May to Wildrence and they’re hoping to raise $6,500 through Kickstarter to stage the show.
We spoke to Harlow Fowler over email to learn more about Rainier Falls.
No Proscenium (NP): Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background in the immersive arts?
Harlow Fowler (HF): Harlow Fowler is Ellena Doe and Gia Ingram, but in a larger sense it’s a group of collaborators with a shared vision and aesthetic who like working together to bring fun, weird things to life. Ellena’s background is in conceptual performance art, and Gia’s background is in traditional theatre. We actually met studying improvisational comedy and realized that we had a shared love of things that were a little bit funny and a little bit sad at the same time. We decided to start collaborating on projects that took people on emotional journeys, and that’s how Harlow Fowler was born.
NP: What, in a nutshell, is the Rainier Falls project about?
HF: In a very small nutshell, Rainier Falls is a Lynchian housewarming party about a woman haunting her own life.
NP: Why did you create this experience? What inspired you?
HF: We created this experience to explore new ways to tell stories and to take our audience on an emotional journey. We’re really deliberate about where we begin a show and where and how we end it, so this is us exploring one particular trajectory.
The tone of the show is heavily inspired by our shared fascination with David Lynch and the worlds he creates and the journeys he takes us all on. The show itself is inspired by a lot of stories we were telling each other about people in ours lives and our own experiences. The central thread is that every person can have a different perception of a shared reality.
NP: How will this experience be different from the Liminal Salon series?
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HF: Liminal Salon is our ongoing series of immersive variety shows. With Liminal Salon, we work really hard to create a new base reality/world, then the show is fully improvised within that new world. Rainier Falls is what we’re considering our first “immersive play.” It’s fully scripted, rehearsed, and repeatable in a way that the Liminal Salon shows aren’t designed to be.
NP: Who are your collaborators and how did they get involved?
HF: We spent years studying, performing, and working at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, and we are really lucky to have a deep well of talent to draw from as a result of that experience. It’s definitely helpful to know a lot of interesting, talented people when you’re producing a monthly variety show!
Some of our specific long-time collaborators are Curtis Retherford and Alessandra Migliaccio for music and developing ideas with, and Allie Lafon and Merritt Evelyn Christensen for production design and creating interesting visual moments. They were some of the first people we reached out to when we began, and they’re all involved in Rainier Falls, as well.
NP: How are you approaching designing around audience agency? What should the audience be expecting in that regard?
HF: For our two debut performances on May 18, we are lucky enough to be staging Rainier Falls at Wildrence. It’s a space we’ve loved and followed ever since it began. It’s a beautiful venue that’s rich with textures, and it’s optimal for the intimate audience sizes we like working with. In order for us to make best use of the space and the opportunities it presents, the show is largely a two track show with some sub-track and one-off moments.
NP: You’re Kickstarting the show, what challenges are you expecting to face with the campaign?
HF: We think we represented the show well in our Kickstarter campaign, but our concerns are probably the same as most theatre creators: How do you inspire an audience to take a risk on something they haven’t seen and can only interpret through your brief presentation?
Also, being an event specific to NYC and to certain show dates is very limiting in terms of reach since we’re also using it as our platform for ticket sales.
NP: What aspect of the experience is the most exciting to you?
HF: First, we’re really excited to see everything come together! We’ve been working on this show for a long time, and it’s been really fun and challenging to use humor and playfulness within the other-wordly realm of immersive theatre. It creates really rewarding, unexpected moments.
Also, since we’ve only produced really intimate one-time shows so far as a company, we’re really excited to have this larger opportunity to showcase of our style and our work. We can’t wait for people to see it!
Learn more about Rainier Falls on their Kickstarter page.
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