The front door to the performance space was closed when I got there. I’d been to this particular spot in this particular patch of the industrial part of downtown Los Angeles, past the Coca-Cola distribution center, plenty of times. The front door had never been bared to me before. Instead there was a crisp sheet of white paper with the oil slick haired image of our 40th president — Ronald Reagan — instructing me to head around the corner to the side door.
I didn’t even know there was a side door.
It was going to be one of those nights.
Just inside the door was a collection of quiet guys-and one gal-lining the walls of the blank foyer. Barring their way from making it further down the hall was a plastic table behind which stood a man: the only one I recognized in the room.
“Are you here for the lecture?” asked Derek Spencer, the heart of Ceaseless Fun, and director of this night’s shenanigans.
And what shenanigans they would be.
Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan is inspired by JG Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition, a collection of experimental stories that includes both the title piece and the story which would become the David Cronenberg film Crash. (Not the Paul Haggis film. That’s a different kind of atrocity.) To give you a sense of the source material, allow me to block quote the wikipedia summary of …Ronald Reagan:
It is written in the style of a scientific paper and catalogues an apocryphal series of bizarre experiments intended to measure the psychosexual appeal of Ronald Reagan, who was then the Governor of California and candidate for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination.
It is upon this canvas by one of the modern canon’s most revered dystopians that Ceaseless Fun projects their own psychosexual, at times giddily schizophrenic designs. Like the source material this is not one for the faint of heart or sole. For one, this is Ballard, so it’s profane as fuck in terms of language and sexual situations, right up to the point of sexual violence. The rehearsal performance I witnessed featured no nudity that I saw, although I know at least one of the actors in the troupe has little issue with bearing it all. (Not that I think this is the plan.)
As for the sole pun: the audience is standing throughout, like a proper sandbox production.
The level of audience agency here is that of the Sleep No More/The Day Shall Declare It variety. Patrons are expected to be silent and follow instructions of cast and staff. We are, after all, guests within the halls of “Los Angeles Memorial Hospital,” and the line between patients and doctors blur enough as it is without us gumming up the works. Our wills are expressed through what we choose to bear witness to, as scenes unfold in parallel throughout the contiguous rooms of the space.
That we are, for the most part, in one large room for the multiple storylines playing out is the major challenge of the production. At times during the preview this created some aural clarity problems, but this is a note the team is aware of and addressing. It is also not without it’s opportunities, as the interplay of the scenes at times creates moments of punctuation — as if we were listening to two songs that somehow came to the same crescendo.
Music is an apt metaphor here, as dialogue is sometimes looped like lyrics — giving time for audience members to catch on while coming in from another scene and for the actors to orbit their characters obsessions verbally.
The character arcs are all heightened affairs — I found myself pulled into a bathroom by The Ghost (Emily Yetter) and from there kept gravitating to her through-line. At times the other scenes acted as percussion to Yetter’s monologues, or she’d intersect with Allegra Masters’ Dr. Austin who I then followed into her next scene. Such is the joy of the sandbox.
Of course, like the sandbox of Sleep No More’s McKitterick Hotel it’s not possible to pick up on everything. But the troupe knows this.
“Attendees can expect to see between a third and a half of the total content in the show throughout one performance,” Derek Spencer tells me. “Because we want folks to be able to follow their impulses and explore the world as fully as possible, we’re making discounted tickets available to all returning guests. I know that if I had the chance to revisit the McKitterick at a reasonable discount, I wouldn’t pass that up. So I’m hoping that folks see this world as worth coming back to throughout the run.”
I’m already contemplating a return trip, as I got little of the always excellent Rachel Rivera’s arc as Karen, am curious about the Reagan obsession of Travis (Dakota Loesch), and always enjoy watching Scott Monahan summon up an off-kilter performance — here as Dr. Nathan — like some kind of trickster god.
There’s a visceral edge to this piece which evoked my dreams of an immersive Marat/Sade and flashes of what Spencer would be able to do with more than a DIY budget: especially given that the design of the show is already a stunner. While the parallel action and frantic energy might work against a sense of linear narrative, this is the fractal mojo of immersive working in high gear. Anchored in cultural anxieties and iconography that have taken on new weight in 2017.
If the immersive theatre scene in Los Angeles is sometimes like the indie rock scene of old, then Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan is a “were you at the show at…?” moment.
Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan plays Feb. 25th & 26th, and March 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th. All shows at 8:30, on the outskirts of DTLA.
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