Remember live, collective, visceral experiences? One where you shared a space with even a single performer who sometimes wouldn’t even tell a story yet command your attention? In the months since the COVID-19 lockdowns have happened, we have all been inundated with VR experiences if we’re lucky, or Zoom experiences at minimum. But despite all of the creative excitement of these new forms, the sensation of sharing a space with performers and some fellow audience members still takes the cake. And if you happen to be in Western New York state, there are opportunities to get a good, old fashioned and in person immersive theatre fix!
A collaboration between “New York-based theatre and visual artist Carin Jean White and artists Itsaso Iribarren & Germán de la Riva from Spain,” The Art of Walking explores Lewiston’s Artpark in an intimately distant fashion. Upon checking in, all patrons are given a pair of headphones which allows us to hear various soundscapes and text from the two performers (Angela Lopez, Phil Wackerfuss at the reviewed performance). After a brief on-boarding, explaining both our walking pace and how the headphones function, one of the performers takes the center of the starting space and takes a deep breath to begin the hour long meditation on time, space, performance, nature and play. This piece doesn’t convey a narrative as much as it conveys a feeling… Presence, Nature, History, Togetherness. Throughout the hour our function shifts from meditative, to playful dancer, to voyeur, with each section gently blurring from the last into the next through the connective tissue of the walks between various areas of Artpark. Rather than expound on details of the nature of the actual performative sections of the piece, just trust me when I say that it was effectively simple and through that simplicity, beautiful.
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As for the inevitable concerns about COVID-19, the use of headphones allows for a great deal of psychological intimacy while maintaining physical distancing from all other participants (audience, tech/stage management, performers), and they are cleaned between all performances (and nobody stopped me when I wiped down my headset with another set of Clorox wipes). Almost the entire piece was done outdoors, and the lone indoor section was only five minutes, in a large stage house, no less. Even though the two performers were not wearing masks, it was easy enough to maintain at least six feet of distance from them, if not more, for the duration of the piece.
On my drive home, I was asking myself if the piece was actually good, or if I was just in too much immersive theatre withdrawal that I’d think anything was good. After much thought, I came to the conclusion that this piece deserves plaudits as it is special. The mere attempt to make a piece that brings people together in these times is reason enough… That it makes us reassess this theatre in a park in the woods across the river from Canada represents a pliability of the work of Iribarren and de la Riva. Was it perfect? Far from it. The performers carried their texts in their pocket and would simply read their lines, for example. But quibbles like this cannot deny the fact that for many of us, this was like a glass of water after weeks in the desert, and that hopefully, more immersive theatre makers can follow their lead and figure out how to make something for smaller audiences.
The Art of Walking runs Saturdays and Sundays through August 29th at the Lewiston, New York Artpark. Tickets are $25. Suggested ages 14 and up.
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