Witness first popped up on NoPro’s radar in New York City with 2017’s The Visitation, which used NYC’s Wycoff House for a “wonderfully creepy site-specific staging” with an “excellent ensemble acting and highly polished script.”
Since then Witness has kept us on our toes, popping up more work in NYC and two productions in Seattle. Now Witness’ Michael Bontatibus is bringing the “all-around spectacular” Ritual, which we last saw in NYC in 2021, to London.
Taking the form of an 8-hour durational immersive theatrical installation (say that three times fast), Ritual is a retelling of the Oresteia, one of the classics of Greek theatre.
Our own Cheyenne Ligon said of the NYC run:
“In Ritual’s retelling of Orestes’ story, Orestes waits for a sign from the gods that he should go forth in killing his mother, Clytemnestra, to avenge her murder of his father. But the gods, who once talked to Orestes, have suddenly gone silent. By his bed, a meticulously-kept dream journal documents dreams filled with symbols and imagery — doors made of polished horn, flaming swords — have suddenly gone silent.”
London audiences will get two chances to experience the event at the COLAB Tower this Feb. 21st & 22nd, and we checked in with playwright Michael Bontatibus to tell us more.
This is No Proscenium’s COMING SOON, a look at ongoing immersive experiences & events. To learn more about how your event could be considered for the feature check out How To Get Covered By NoPro.
NoPro is 100% reader & listener supported. Become a subscriber to secure & expand our coverage of Everything Immersive or drop a little something in our Tip Jar!
NO PROSCENIUM: Tell us a little bit about your experience! What’s it about? What makes it immersive?
Michael Bontatibus: Ritual is a durational immersive theatre piece which lasts eight hours, based on the ancient Greek tragedy The Oresteia. In our version, Orestes has returned from exile to take revenge on his mother for murdering his father, guided by the gods. But at the final stage - when Orestes has already broken back into his childhood palace and set up in its forgotten depths - the gods go quiet on him.
So, for eight hours a day, audiences are invited in to watch Orestes as he performs rituals in hopes of getting the gods to speak to him once more. It's a free public performance, and guests can show up at any point throughout the day and decide how they want to spend their time – they can stay for a few minutes or a few hours, they can leave and return, they can watch the performer (who is on for the full eight hours), or rummage through a fully-designed set.
NP: What was the inspiration for your upcoming experience?
MB: The thought to do a marathon immersive Oresteia actually started in the early days of COVID, when everyone was feverishly trying to think of the best way to do remote Zoom theatre. I had Anne Carson’s excellent translation on my shelf as a reference point, and quickly wrote a script that could take place across three virtual rooms in real time over the course of a day – purposefully meant as a period of time that was too long to stick with the whole way through, so you’d have to be intentional about when you tuned in and out. Many of our previous site-specific shows involved the audience exploring a physical space, but that wasn’t possible in the early pandemic days – so what if we provided the audience an opportunity to explore time instead?
Then the reality of lockdown settled in a bit and I realized I had neither the skills nor the desire to design a piece of theatre that was dependent on breakout rooms. But the idea stuck around, especially the notion of trading exploring space for exploring time – real estate with elbow room was (and is) getting harder and harder to find, so lacking the ability to stage something across a wide physical area, we decided to try painting on a time-based canvas instead. That led to the first version of Ritual in 2021, and this is now its second staging.
NP: What do you think fans of immersive will find most interesting about this latest experience?
MB: We’re hoping people find a lot of freedom in how they approach the show – be it exploring the set, watching the performance, or a combination of both. I think there’s quite a lot of dialogue right now about what’s happening to our collective attention spans in the face of short-form content, but I think people might learn something about how they can engage with a live performance like ours - yes, it’s eight hours, but yes, you can walk out at any time (and, potentially, walk back in). It both indulges and tests your attention span.
NP: Once you started designing and testing what did you discover about this experience that was unexpected?
MB: When we did the show in New York, I had this idea that the average person was going to stay for 45 minutes or so. What ended up happening was a bunch of people stayed for five minutes and a bunch of people stayed for multiple hours. And both are completely valid ways to experience the show! I underestimated the amount of audience that would treat it like an installation – a brief artistic detour before continuing on with your day – and the amount of people who had the focus to stay in the world much longer than I probably could’ve in their shoes.
NP: What can fans who are coming to this, or thinking about coming to this, do to get into the mood of the experience?
MB: Another great opportunity to plug Anne Carson’s An Oresteia for background reading. For the story that kicks off the Oresteia, there’s the 1977 Michael Cacoyannis film Iphigenia, or you can also read Anne Washburn's adaptation of Iphigenia in Aulis, which was my first exposure to the myth when I saw it at Classic Stage Company.
We’re in the midst of a wave of Greek tragedy adaptations onstage too, and regardless of the play, the storylines and characters in many of them overlap with the Oresteia somehow. Two great examples, Robert Icke's Oedipus and Alexander Zeldin's The Other Place, have now made their way over from London to New York. (And the latter, I believe, you can watch too on NT At Home?)
You can also watch this random University of Michigan lecture on The Oresteia that I came across while writing and was totally captivated by. For all my belief in the importance of artists interpreting and reinterpreting classics, there’s something super satisfying about watching a seasoned professor take apart the story from an academic angle.
Discover the latest immersive events, festivals, workshops, and more at our new site EVERYTHING IMMERSIVE, home of NoPro’s show listings.
NoPro is a labor of love made possible by our backers. Join them today and get access to our Newsletter and Discord!
In addition to the No Proscenium website and our podcast, and you can find NoPro on Bluesky, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and in the Facebook community also named Everything Immersive.
Discussion