I find myself zooming down a spiral slide located behind a swinging bookshelf into an enchanted forest twinkling with lights. A Dalí-esque mansion stretches out in front of me, where a nervous woman with a There’s Something About Mary haircut catches my attention. She nervously stutters:
“Aha! You’re just what I needed! You see, the mistress of the house, she has commissioned me to explore this forest, using its botanicals to derive — ”
She picks up a beaker filled with white goo and then lifts a paintbrush, dipped in the same white goo, to my face.
“ — hypoallergenic, vegan skincare, made by Nuria!”
As her sales spiel begins, only one thought is in my head.
“The capitalists have landed.”
House of SHOWFIELDS, an immersive experience at the SHOWFIELDS store, pitches itself as “immersive theatre experience that bridges art and retail.” Think shopping meets Sleep No More. Details and descriptions of the experience are sparse, presumably to keep an aura of mystery. In practice, it’s a strange hybrid of a narrative-light interactive theatre piece and a selfie palace. Down the archetypal slide you go into the house and gardens of “Mrs. Showfields,” a character so loosely sketched out that her name and her ownership of the house is about all I can say in terms of description.
In general, when evaluating immersive work, I begin by asking myself if the piece achieved what it set out to do. For all of its lofty aims, House of SHOWFIELDS is a resounding failure. House of SHOWFIELDS sets up great Instagram shots, with inventive sets like an enormous pillow pile or a surreal glistening bathroom, with all the lighting perfectly tailored for iPhone photography. But that’s not the goal here — the word “Instagrammable” is actually banned among SHOWFIELDS staff, according to creator Tal Ziv Nathanel, so that’s not a criteria for any serious consideration.
Get Blake Weil’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
SubscribeSubscribe
Did the experience get me to buy anything? No. Most of the products on display are incongruous and somewhat hard to connect with (more on that later). On the positive side of things were the food and supplements on offer. The actress staffing the kitchen was talented, and explained her samples well. I found the way her smoothie samples came in little vials to be charming. And the weird futuristic look of Gem Multivitamins lent itself well to being sampled in such a strange atmosphere: a black, fibrous cube with a strong flavor of menthol and the texture of dirt. The bizarro environment of House of SHOWFIELDS made sampling it feel not only sensible, but mandatory. If the intent of the piece was just to get that trial, then maybe the creators could chalk up a win. But other products like hypoallergenic lotion, Quip Toothbrushes (of podcast fame), and the Book of the Month Club either can’t be conventionally sampled, or don’t need a gimmicky environment to convince me to try them. It’s clear that the products were crammed into the space, as opposed to having a space created to best highlight the aforementioned products.
The pinnacle by far was the insanely miscalculated featuring of Ethos, a prefabricated hotel room. This room was for some bizarre reason placed into a forest environment, a blaring foghorn of immersion-shattering product placement in an otherwise pleasant setting. The house, of course, had no bedroom. Ethos’ rooms are additionally not available to stay in anywhere currently, nor was Ethos seeking investors through the creation of the installation. When I asked the actress showcasing Ethos’ product why they were here, the performer seemed just as clueless as me, only giving vague reassurances that this was a “concept store.”
Throughout each demo in House of SHOWFIELDS, the experience was disconnected enough that even if the products appealed to me (and some did, like the smart, internet-enabled picture frames in the living room), I didn’t want to buy them here. Asking a character to sell you something is a little weird, and feels like it shatters the social contract of the reality you create together as performer and audience. The end result was all of the awkwardness of defining boundaries in an immersive theatre show with none of the emotional rewards.
Which leads to my final point: this experience failed as immersive theatre. The most frustrating thing about that is that the creators didn’t seem to try that hard in the first place. “Things are zany, take a picture and then buy some lotion!” isn’t immersive theatre. That just an eccentric shopkeep enabled by an interior designer. Why not try a storyline as to why the customer is here? The whole thing felt enough like a bad Tupperware party through the looking glass; why not just call it such? At least then you could have a rich narrative environment to play within as opposed to the gorgeous thematic void that the House becomes.
What drives me absolutely nuts is that I still kind of like House of SHOWFIELDS. It’s a great concept. Immersive theatre makes great themed environments. We all have to shop in our capitalist society, and many lament the death of brick-and-mortar retail to internet giants like Amazon. Why not make retail spaces more fun? Why not let salespeople have some of that fun too and “play” with customer a little bit, and make the task of shopping into an out-of-the-ordinary treat? It’s why insanely expensive boutiques and overly posh department stores are fun to walk through; they transport you to a new, glamorous world even if you don’t buy anything. The world, at least in terms of set dressing, at House of SHOWFIELDS is a ton of fun! But the mix of lazy worldbuilding combined with overreaching marketing materials leaves a sour taste in my mouth when I’ve been told I’m about to embark on an Alice in Wonderland shopping adventure… and I don’t get one.
I think SHOWFIELDS could find the most success in “House of SHOWFIELDS-izing” other retail stores. There’s no reason shopping can’t be mysterious, engrossing, emotional, or thrilling. Trying to marry multiple products, all competing for attention, to a narrative structure can be a Herculean task, though. It’s ironic how naturally this union has occurred when it’s not the primary focus of an experience. Other more established selfie factories have worked stores into their design. The stores at The Color Factory and Museum of Ice Cream are hits, and the delight of the experience imbues the objects you can buy with the memory of that delight. Here, while it was briefly fun, I don’t particularly feel any huge need to grab a souvenir to remember House of SHOWFIELDS.
I don’t find myself angry or disappointed as I would be normally with an experience like this, and that’s because House of SHOWFIELDS is already a smarter way of taking lessons from immersive theatre and applying them to retail. It beats lame activations that are just selfie factories without any connective tissue or ambition to their being other than getting photos spread far and wide. If House of SHOWFIELDS can either push the envelope just a bit further, or figure out a way to focus their strengths at the store level, it can achieve great things, and maybe succeed at making shopping fun again. But until then, it’s less like Sleep No More, and more like a Bass Pro Shop for the Instagram generation: novel, tempting to investigate, but ultimately, kind of lame.
House of SHOWFIELDS continues through September 9. Tickets are free.
NoPro is a labor of love made possible by our generous Patreon backers. Join them today!
In addition to the No Proscenium web site, our podcast, and our newsletters, you can find NoPro on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, in the Facebook community Everything Immersive, and on our Slack forum.
Office facilities provided by Thymele Arts, in Los Angeles, CA.
Discussion