Compelled to hold onto something, I cradled my feet. Roughly seven minutes earlier, I received a phone call from an unknown number. Caller ID placed it in Floral Park, New York. A stranger phoned me to tell me his secrets. I knew about this call beforehand — I signed up for an experience called Secrets.

What I didn’t know is just how terribly misguided the show is.

Designed and produced by Living Lucid Creative, Secrets offers two options for its one-on-one experience between two strangers: tell someone your hidden truths or listen to someone reveal theirs. I chose the latter, curious as to what the confessional would unearth.

On their website, Living Lucid Creative describes secrets as a great equalizer: “Everyone has secrets. Kids. Parents. Bosses. Billionaires. Grocery store clerks. Mailmen. ER doctors.” I weighed this, wondering what I was expecting. Would it be validation that my own secrets are benign? Would I feel bonded to this person or alienated? Would I hear a script or would the claims seem jarringly real? Would there be any potential to influence the show’s outcome? After my recent stint with claws, Candle House Collective’s new and well-executed helpline show, I considered if I might play the role of a guide, not just absorbing a confession, but counseling towards some sort of resolution.

Once the experience started, those thoughts dropped flatly out of my head as though they had been suddenly demagnetized. Answering the call, I was met with a man’s voice, with an indistinct dialect. After he confirmed my identity and that he could “trust” me, he shed the accent. He asked which kind of secret I wanted him to disclose. I directed him to confide whatever most gnawed at him, the thing he desperately needed to share.

(Moderate spoilers, including crude humor and references to bodily functions and sexual assault, follow.)

From there, he launched into a lengthy tale of… poop. Yes, he did indeed take me on a graphic journey of his fifth-grade intestinal reckoning from school lunch sloppy joes alongside Jimmy, an innocuous, but unyielding, classmate occupying the lone bathroom stall. Without other options, our protagonist urgently voided his bowels in a urinal, resulting in a wide splash zone, which miraculously only reached Jimmy, who then strolled around school for the rest of the day, oblivious to his shit-stained pants and their acridity, even as he was teased by the rest of the student body.

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I coughed up some awkward laughter and struggled to restrain myself. What was this? Certain language alluded to a script structure, so this didn’t seem fully improvised. As I mentally fumbled around, straining towards how I could shift the direction of this experience, the protagonist (I don’t recall if he ever introduced himself by name) segued into some nonsensical thoughts about karma: if, after all these years, he should search for Jimmy to make a “payback” attempt (even though Jimmy was the one to endure bodily-function-mockery) and the odd acknowledgement he’s not legally allowed within 25 feet of any public parks (what?).

Before I could catch my breath, he cannonballed straight into the deep end with thinly veiled jokes about rape and sexual assault by way of a parent, a school employee, and a group of adult strangers: his father rubbing copious amount of baby oil on him, which progressed to other activities; a high school basketball coach assisting him with post-workout stretching and more; and men repeatedly escorting him to “parties” in a white van, during which he was offered candy, lost consciousness, and later woke up with anal pain. This is when I held onto my feet.

Until this point, I’d mostly listened, but now I elbowed back into the conversation. “So what you’re talking about is rape and sexual assault. You were raped and assaulted?” He scoffed at this and presented a maundering footnote about the candy’s dairy composition and his lactose intolerance, which was vaguely tied to the sloppy joes incident (I know no sloppy joes recipes that include dairy, but okay). There were additional “jokes” about his computer having AIDS (a virus gag), an addiction to smelling cat urine (it’s the pheromones), and how gingers are always bad at sports (hi Shaun White).

Humor is one of my coping skills and the lens through which I often see the world. There was nothing funny about Secrets; there was nothing entertaining, moving, educational, insightful, or cathartic. I wasn’t provoked to reassess my personal biases or worldview. I wasn’t aligned with an emotional ally in existential solidarity over the nuances and universality of our shared human experience. It felt like the performer vomited a word slurry of juvenile fascination, foul stereotypes, and horrific abuse to reach no end.

Throughout the past months, No Proscenium has made a concerted, ongoing effort not just to review creative projects birthed or restaged against the pandemic backdrop, but to foster real dialogue about these singular challenges and to pose vital questions: How will this period impact the immersive industry, both short and long-term? What is presently working and why? Creators are pouring themselves into the space between these imposed constraints and I salute their efforts and vulnerability.

Sadly, Secrets seems to have given little contemplation to the current snapshot of our fraught, precarious lives, including our COVID-culture, political climate, or entertainment landscape. Unlike other productions, there were no specific content advisories. A safe phrase was listed only on the Living Lucid Creative website and not enclosed in email correspondence. Assessing the production, I cannot understand how the experience design could have been concretely, carefully mapped out. Other than grotesque shock, the show had no discernible goal or productive conclusion. It was an experience full of detritus and absent any artistic value. Ironically, throughout the performance, the protagonist peppered his admissions with an observation: it’s essential to “plan ahead” in life. If only the same could be said for Secrets itself.

Secrets continues through July 25; tickets are $30.

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