When Art at the Rendon // Stories — “an immersive, operatic work” — showed up on our radar our ears perked up.

A large scale installation involving projection mapping and performance in and around a building in LA’s Arts District? Twist our arms, why don’t you?

We got a chance to ask creative director Maria Ziman some questions about what we can expect from the upcoming event, which is a benefit for Inner-City Arts and Cornerstone Theater Company.

No Pro: In a nutshell: what is Art at the Rendon//Stories?

Maria Ziman : An interactive, sight specific, all encompassing sensory experience embracing, film, music, art and performance.

NP: What is the overall Art at the Rendon project, and how did it come about?

MZ: It’s the story of transient lives as they moved through Los Angeles over the last century.

NP: As this work was developed what influences did the team find itself coming back to?

MZ: Personally, a friend of my parents in England, Ann Jellicoe, (who was of the first proponents of immersive Community Theatre), remains an influence.

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This is very much a community based production. Performers range from professional actors, to local musicians and artists.

Sleep No More is a reference, without the masks, and with more restriction on the audiences’ interaction with the site and rooms. They will not be allowed to touch the room staging or the performers.

NP: Immersive/interactive is always a hybrid — what elements from the immersive palette can patrons expect? For instance: how is the team approaching designing around audience agency?

MZ: The audience (patrons) are voyeurs and view each room from a 4 foot radius within the doorway of each hotel room.The patrons explore the rooms and corridors of the hotel and catch glimpses into the lives and living spaces of the inhabitants. Due to the close quarters of each room, there is an intimacy to the voyeurism that the audience might first perceive with a frisson of unease. This is intentionally provoking and something we think the audience will become more immune to as the performance progresses.

The performers do not register the existence of the audience. The exceptions being the Opera Singer beckoning and inviting the audience into the building after the opening aria on the exterior fire escape, the peripatetic Hotel Custodian who moves from room to room fixing building malfunctions and moving on potential audience bottlenecks in the corridors.

99% of the time the performers only interact amongst themselves.

NP: What do you hope participants take away from the experience?

MZ: We want to challenge and engage the audience. We hope to give them just enough and leave them wanting more.

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