There are moments so sacred that to speak of them is a betrayal.

Whispered conversations so aching with longing that they make your throat tighten.

Shared intimate silences more meaningful than speech.

Immersive theatre has, for me, become an avenue for chasing those moments. They are not to be mistaken for an emotional “high”; adrenaline, exhilaration, distress, even joy, have nothing to do with it. They are, instead, the product of a particular sort of journey. A journey of confession and counter-confession, the teasing-out of personal insight, slowly unspooling self-revelation. An earned feeling of solidarity, built shoulder to shoulder between actor and creator and participant. Sometimes the journey takes days, months, years; other times it takes hours, even minutes. But when you reach the end, you learn that the path has led you to the place where vulnerability and wonder meet.

In Candle House Collective’s phone call ARX Crossed Wires, that journey takes three days.

…

My phone rings.

I have been waiting: these calls take place by appointment. A momentary flutter, and then I answer, pretending a confidence I never truly feel on the phone. “Hello.”

“How can I direct your call?”

The voice on the other end is the lilting undertone of Evan Neiden, creator and actor, who previously played the Apprentice in his Last Candle ARX. There was a time when, as the Apprentice, he whispered the story of the Princess and the Frog to me like a sweet secret. But now, for this show, he is The Operator: enigmatic, quickly perceptive, here to take a thorough emotional survey before he assigns me with three phone connections. At times he questions me as if I am a curious specimen for him to study — but in brief flashes he warms, appearing touched by some of my answers. This is the magic of Neiden’s voice: my nervous halting stammer calms, spellbound. I would tell The Operator anything he asked.

He quizzes me for over twenty minutes. Being quizzed by an actor/writer is something I am used to: I’ve done my fair share of immersive questionnaires and surveys. But in other immersive shows, I have often felt that my answers don’t work with the script. The person on the other end needs something more definitive — something they can judge, scorn, agree with, use as a quick pivot point to their next question. If my answer doesn’t fit, they impatiently rephrase the question until I give them an answer that does. But The Operator isn’t like that. Whether it is intellectual curiosity or personal, he seems interested when I equivocate, gently probing to find what lies underneath. We work toward the answer together. He pauses as often as I pause, considering. And when I finally arrive where he expects me to arrive, at a usable answer, he turns deadpan, making me laugh. We are on the same side, he and I. And neither of us needs or wants to rush through something that feels, already, so important.

The conversation parses the connections in my life — human connections I have had, lost, missed, forgotten. He asks, at one point, what the loss of one connection felt like on a sensory level, and I feel it all over again, in my body, sitting alone in the dark: that physical, visceral loneliness. We analyze my feelings about connections over the phone, and their level of immediacy, and whether or not I can be my authentic self on the phone. (I think that I cannot: I will soon learn that I can.) As the survey concludes, The Operator tells me that he has chosen three connections for me. He warns me that the cold air of October has brought forth connections that may be grim or disturbing, and encourages me to stay open but know my own limits. “We are, after all, here for you,” he says.

And I sit back, light a candle, and wait for my first connection.

…

Connection #1 — EXCIEO
(Evan Neiden, Harrison O’Callaghan)

I have been texted instructions. A sound file. An image. A ritual.

I have performed the ritual by candlelight.

I have sent back the results.

And now the texts come pouring in. They are from a spirit, I think, he says that he can see me, but his stream of consciousness is broken and halting and interspersed with fuzzy incomprehensible images, and then he is calling me, my phone is ringing, and his voice is gasping in my ear, croaking, sinister, speaking of taking my skin off piece by piece, I’ll like it, I’ll say I won’t like it but he’ll know I’m just playing hard to get, what am I hiding from him, what am I hiding from him, what am I hiding from him…

“What are you hiding from me, Lauren?”

Over the next hour, I will hear my own voice flood with compassion as I begin to understand the pain that my caller is in. As he veers between lucidity and horrifying gibberish, between calls and texts, we will slowly work together to unravel the story of one fateful night. It will feel like a brush with death. I will encounter my own inner resistance as he encounters his.

When it is all over, I will sit and stare at the flickering candle for a long time.

…

Connection #2 — COLLECT CALL
(Jonathan Connolly, Harrison O’Callaghan)

It’s Day #2 when my second connection calls.

I am receiving a collect call from an inmate in the Texas State Penitentiary. Would I like to accept the charges?

“I accept.”

In a moment, we are connected.

The inmate’s voice is boyish, hopeful. He sounds overjoyed to hear my voice.

I learn that his name is Andy — Andy Miller. I learn that he was well known, once, in all the newspaper headlines. Because of what he did. And I learn that he is on death row, and has exactly 24 hours left before his execution.

We have one hour. Just one. And for that hour, Andy wants to talk to someone who isn’t a reporter, or an inmate, or a guard, or a lawyer: he wants to talk to someone who can see him as him. Just plain Andy.

He wants to know: what would I do if I had 24 hours left?

The conversation is fraught. Andy’s every word is full of a unique, subtextual urgency. As he tells me about his life, I feel compelled to write down notes on everything, all the details and colors of a life that may be lost to time after he’s gone. Afterward, I look over the notes: they say things like “vanilla Jello pudding,” “Porky Pig,” “flecks of gold,” “phone repair shop”. A mosaic of impressions of Andy’s life, like retinal afterimages, never as real as the real thing, already fading.

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Of his story, I will say only this: he did not deserve to die.

Whenever he asks me a question, my responses are gentle but quick, careful not to waste his time. I don’t want to squander these stolen minutes with pretend answers, answers about what to do and what he should have done and who he is, answers I can’t possibly pretend to really have. But when I do have something to say, he listens closely. He is grateful. It breaks me.

As our time runs out, his desperation mounts. He doesn’t want to die: but there is more than one kind of death, and not being remembered is another.

“My life is more than a fucking cautionary tale.”

I try to help him toward some sense of purpose, or closure, or resolution. But part of me is screaming internally at the unfairness of this end. My words ring hollow.

When he hangs up, I hear nothing but the sound of my own breathing.

…

Connection #3 — NOW N’ LATER
(Jack Drummond, Natalie Welber)

My third caller is groggy. Confused. He just woke up. He doesn’t know who I am. And he doesn’t know where he is. It’s so dark.

I’m amused, at first: he’s so bewildered. But then there is a rattling sound, and he suddenly sounds awake, sharp, alarmed: he has realized that he is chained to the wall. And he doesn’t know how to escape.

As I stammer in confusion, I’m interrupted by a Milgram-esque buzzer sound. Suddenly a new voice is in my ear. It’s a woman, her voice high and careful and precise, like a woman from a vintage black-and-white commercial.

“Want to hear something funny? I’ve already guessed how this is going to end.”

The woman — Olivia Bailey — is running an “experiment” on the man — Maxwell Sanford. (And, I suppose, on me.) She’s chained him to the wall and poured kerosene in a pool around his feet, in a trail that leads directly to her. In thirty minutes, she will strike the match. Until then, she will allow me to communicate with Maxwell over the intercom, 90 seconds at a time. I can help him escape, I can decline, but whatever I do — I must keep him talking.

And so we launch into a perverse game of escape room-meets-interrogation. Why has Olivia done this to Maxwell? Is this the work of a madwoman — or has Maxwell done something to stain his soul? Can it be both? I weigh both options as I work to free Maxwell. My decisions become more and more grim as my options narrow. And as I press for the truth on both sides, I realize that the standoff between them is more complicated than I could have imagined.

How did I become the arbiter of justice?

What does justice look like?

The call ends with a stark clarity that there can be no clarity. There were no “right” answers.

Were there?

Or is the story of ambiguity simply the story I tell myself to assuage my own conscience?

I still wonder.

…

The connections have all been made. But there’s still one day left.

…

The Candle House Collective has stated that it is unlikely Crossed Wires will remount. Nevertheless, I find myself shying away from telling you about that last day. I’m not the only one: on their Slack, the #recollection channel remains largely empty of specifics, and intentionally so. The whispered finale is so potent, so intimate, that speaking of it feels like sacrilege.

I will tell you this. The Operator calls again.

He delivers three outgoing messages.

He tells me that the day will come when he will deliver mine.

“So,” he says gently, “make it count.”

When the last call comes to a close, my face is wet with tears.

…

There are conclusions to be drawn here, conclusions about the exciting prospect of further intimate phone-based ARXs, about how $65 was genuinely a fair price, about Neiden as a pioneer of a new art form. I could talk about how Crossed Wires was a masterclass in interactive acting; I could beg for a subscription service with monthly calls, for which I would gladly pay a small fortune.

I must confess: I don’t have the emotional distance for that just yet.

A week later, I am still working through the exquisite grief and wonder of Crossed Wires. My emotional reckoning has not concluded. So let me leave you as I was left — with an ellipsis, and a small silence, and a final, whispered, “Goodnight…”

Crossed Wires has run its course. Keep an eye on Candle House Collective for more.

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