Pondering the Office Life in ‘Extinct’ (Q&A)

by Kathryn Yu
Kathryn Yu
•
November 28, 2018
•
3 min read

We speak to creator Kate Douglas about corporate absurdism and the Windows 95 launch

Rather than taking audiences back to the pre-prohibition era or a fantasy nether world, the new immersive show Extinct chooses to take participants into a very, very familiar place: modern corporate life.

Writer/director Kate Douglas (Sleep No More, The Grand Paradise) has developed a show about the surrealness of being a 9-to-5 worker, and she’s collaborating a team of other immersive theatre veterans whose names may be familiar, including Brendan Duggan and Tori Sparks.

We caught up with Kate over email to ask her some questions about the upcoming Extinct.

No Proscenium: Could you tell us a little about yourself and your background in the immersive arts?

Kate Douglas (KD): I have worked as Associate Artist and performer for The McKittrick Hotel, home of Sleep No More, since 2012.

As a performer, I have also worked on numerous site-specific/immersive projects, including Third Rail Projects’ The Grand Paradise, Fernando Rubio’s Everything by my side and Martha Bowers’ Angels and Accordions.

NP: What, in a nutshell, is Extinct?

KD: Extinct is a theatrical office experience that allows you to peer into the absurd inner workings of AllCorp, where productivity is touted as the key to happiness, a strange infestation of plants is growing up through people’s desks, and no one asks why. It is an investigation of our culture of routine over reflection and what we are killing to make a killing.

NP: How did the project come about? What inspired you to make Extinct?

KD: It is deeply influenced by the tension I feel between my connection to green spaces as a student herbalist and Master Naturalist Trainee and my home in an urban environment — and my hunger to talk more openly about the experience of loneliness in the midst of the Sixth Extinction (with a sense of humor, of course).

I have been in conversation with choreographer Brendan Duggan and art director/assistant director Tori Sparks about this piece for several years, and we have developed it through an administrative residency at Gibney Dance and an excerpt performance at the INSITU Festival last year. Now, thanks to a grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, we are able to put Extinct on its feet.

NP: Who are your collaborators?

KD: The inimitable choreographer Brendan Duggan and art director/assistant director Tori Sparks, without whom none of this would be possible. We are also working with dramaturg Carolyn Hall, whose insight has been invaluable as we dive deeper into the environmental themes that underpin this work. We have also assembled a wickedly charming and talented cast — Louis Butelli, Marina Mocerino, Troy Ogilvie and Jose Rivera Jr. — who have been absolutely fearless during this rehearsal process.

NP: How has your experience as an immersive performer informed your process?

KD: It has given me an intimate understanding of how powerful immersive theater is at shifting an audience’s perspective, and in this vein, I am currently developing my practice in weaving my own kind of activism through the medium’s fabric.

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

KD: Numerous absurdist plays, films and video games — but most notably, videos of the Windows 95 launch.

NP: How is the audience incorporated into the work? How are you designing around audience agency, consent, and safety?

KD: Extinct largely takes place around a conference table, and the terms of engagement may be similar to ones audience members have experienced in their own lives. Audience is engaged as new hires for AllCorp, and there is a lot of paperwork to do before they start thinking about agency.

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

KD: A terrific laugh and perhaps a bit of a reckoning on what sustains and nourishes them in their life.

Extinct runs November 29 — December 15 in Midtown Manhattan. Tickets are $15.

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This month we’d also like to thank The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts for sponsoring our features.