The scene: Hollywood, CA.
It’s summer and the temperature is starting to rise, but it hasn’t launched into the full-blown inferno of a Southern California summer. Not yet, at least.
The streets are swarming with performers and theatergoers. They’re looking for that next show. That next scene. That. Next. Big Thing. They can’t seem to stop going in and out, in and out, in and out of something called…Thymele Arts.
This isn’t their story though. This is the story of the immersive theatre critics who have found themselves in a dimension of stage, a dimension of acting, a dimension of art. A land at the edge, one of both reality and non-reality.
We have just stepped into…The Fringe Diary.
View our guide to everything immersive at Hollywood Fringe Festival 2019.
Fringe Diary Guide
- Can’t Miss/Hope For Extensions — Grab a ticket if you can or sign up for a mailing list. There’s something *special* going on here.
- Fringe Fun — Looking for a good time, we got you.
- Workshop Worthy — A piece that could use some work, but shows promise.
- Skip It — No, just no.
- Miscategorized— At best: this isn’t immersive, so we shouldn’t have been summoned. At worst: well, there goes an hour we won’t be getting back.
Can’t Miss/Hope For Extensions
The Pod
The Pod is ostensibly about a training exercise meant to make sure you and your mission partner can work together on the long voyage to another planet. Which is to say, that is absolutely what the show is about, but also kind of not really because it has so much more on its mind…
[Katelyn Schiller] layers in new dimensions as Ellie learns from you and processes what’s happening. The format of the show means she needs to reorient every few minutes, which means finding disappointment, elation, and fear at a rapid-fire pace. It pays off and makes for a performance, and an experience, that deftly lands its touching and emotional beats. And what happens when you leave the simulation is likely to be one of the more powerful moments of this year’s Fringe.
— Kevin Gossett (Read the full review.)
Tales By Candlelight
An olfactory journey to create an artifact of a place that never was. A place drawn from your imagination… Unlike anything I had ever imagined on my own… I’m going to cherish this forever.
— Noah Nelson
Read our full review by Kevin Gossett.
Best Night Ever: A Bachelor(ette) Night
A largely improvised piece that puts the audience in the role of members of a bachelorette/bachelor party night out in Hollywood, this collaboration between Katnip Productions, #metaforyou, and Bees Knees is a fun little romp.
There’s an element of roleplaying here, as we’re all thrust into the roles of friends of the bride/groom and packed into a limo where things instantly start to go off the rails. (Not the driving. That was super profesh.) What’s remarkable is how quickly the group of strangers I was with just fell into being a range of archetypes: the college enabler, the failed AA sponsor, the bickering couple, and the hedgehog breeder. Okay, maybe that one wasn’t so much a type as drawn from the fake wedding website the production group put up. Still: it’s a valid in storyworld choice and I’m sticking to it.
Hijinks ensue as bad news puts the whole wedding at risk (blame social media) and the groom gets cold feet.
Two parallel tracks — bride and groom — play out in two different limos, which makes this piece replayable.
Look: Best Night Ever might not be deep, but it’s fun. It feels like it could use a little expansion/tuning — and maybe a shift in venue out of Hollywood post-Fringe — but is pretty much ready to be a go-to answer to the question “What should I take my friends from out of town to see?” That is, if the makers want to put in the work to establish a longer run and put just a little more meat on the bones.
Note: KJ Knies, who writes for us occasionally, is a producer on this. He had no say or foreknowledge of this review.
— Noah Nelson
Fringe Fun
Ascend: When Myths Fall, Heroes Rise
What I love about Fringe is how it gives creators and performers the chance to experiment and that’s what I ultimately liked about Ascend: When Myths Fall, Heroes Rise. It was an ambitious, two-hour piece that combined theater, improv, and gaming, tied together via various world mythologies.
The takeaway: Though not a highly polished show, this one’s worth a shot if you’ve got $30 to spend on a fun, puzzle/improv-based experiment. Build an adventurous, game-loving team and check it out!
— Juliet Bennet Rylah (Read the full review.)
Internal
They Played Productions has put together what’s probably the most accomplished audio walking tour based show yet at the Fringe. You’ll find yourself cast into the opening hours of a zombie apocalypse, with a neurotic stream of consciousness losing a battle with a spiritual infection that it miiiiight just be in denial about.
The format switches between inner monologues — which can run a little long at points — and off-beat interactions with a small cast of characters who blend in enough with the chaos of Vine that they actually do need the big button with a cartoon brain on it so you don’t find yourself accidentally having a conversation about the impending end of the world with someone who has to make their home in a sidewalk tent.
The actual actor interactions range from good to pretty damn good, and show that They Played is parlaying their background in larping into effective interactions for solo play. Internal is worth a look-see, and a development cycle beyond the Fringe playground.
— Noah Nelson
Workshop Worthy
So Vote For MURDER! was one of the odder experiences I’ve had at a Fringe immersive show, or any immersive piece, really.
The idea behind the show is a solid one: it’s basically ‘Clue,’ set in a high school and expanded into an interactive theatre game. The execution on the performances was pitch perfect: a ridiculous tone that was so unconsciously maintained by a talented cast when it could have been a try-hard disaster.
Unfortunately the structure was broken: half of which seemed to be out of the company’s control — they lost their original venue the day before opening and had to adapt. The other half could have been fallout from that: as there were multiple puzzles that were broken. Not “hard and weird” but just broken. Like an unscramble puzzle where one of the clue letters was placed in the wrong spot… which happened to lead to a different answer. Or when we were sent on a fetch quest to and seemingly brought back the wrong item that perfectly matched the description.
In the right space, and with a polish pass on the puzzles, Vote For MURDER! could really be a winner. Right now: it needs some triage. (Triage I hope it gets. We could use more stuff like this around.)
— Noah Nelson
Boxing Your Demons
Part fitness class, part yoga class, part wellness seminar, part lifestyle workshop. That all kind of describes Boxing Your Demons, the fitness-yoga-wellness-lifestyle class within the larger show of Boxing Your Demons, which is just those plus some dark comedy and immersive theatre. If that all seems like a lot, it’s because Boxing Your Demons does have a lot of ideas. And it wants to try all of them out over its runtime.
Audience members take on the role of participants in ‘Boxing Your Demons,’ a workshop hosted by Guy and Sheila Larpen of Larpen Lifestyle Solutions and their assistant/fan, Andrew. And because the show is emulating an actual workshop, that means a good deal of active movement (the pre-show info recommends wearing gym clothes, or at least loose clothing, and it’s a good idea). If you don’t want to or can’t move around the room for any reason, they make it clear you can just sit and watch.
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The whole point of ‘Boxing Your Demons’ is to help participants to remove their cognitive dissonance. The way the Larpens handle that takes on a variety of forms over the course of their class. Boxing Your Demons wants to confront the idea of cognitive dissonance too and its main method seems to be throwing a lot at participants, so you’re moving around the characters while watching a scene play out. It makes for an interesting wrinkle, but it also makes it extremely hard to actually take in the dialogue when you’re trying not to run into other participants. And sure, that may be part of the point the show wants to make, but it doesn’t necessarily make for the best way to get the point across.
This is especially true of the climax of the piece when you’re doing a breathing thing and moving while watching a dialogue-less scene play out while trying to watch and listen to a separate video. It makes paying attention to any particular thing difficult and dulls the impact of the sequence.
Even though the show never quite comes together, it still manages to be an enjoyable experience. Fitness class as audience participation is an interesting idea. It doesn’t quite work in this context, but it feels close and could work with some tuning. A segment near the end also features some fun immersive elements that lets participants leave their mark on the show. The show is also quite funny as it pokes fun at fitness and wellness culture. Some of the jokes feel incongruent with the message the show is trying to get across, but that’s kind of part and parcel with Boxing Your Demons.
In a way, this is almost a quintessential Fringe show. Boxing Your Demons tries on so many ideas and even though they don’t all work, it’s still kind of entertaining to watch all of those ideas at play.
— Kevin Gossett
Rock Band Murder Mystery
Under the right conditions, and with some tightening up, Rock Band Murder Mystery could not be a mess.
The idea isn’t bad: a murder mystery larp where all the participants are members of a rock band and their entourage circa 1989. The band even “plays a show” through the use of the now-classic video game *Rock Band*.
It’s the execution where things get messy. For starters, it took about a half hour of the show’s run-time before we actually started to play. That’s because, as a larp, there’s a fair amount of on-boarding to do. Although a good amount of that time could have been shaved off with some design effort. As it stands: a half hour is way too long to stand around with nothing to do on a Saturday night: it’s an energy killer far more deadly than any mid-80’s cocaine cocktail.
Then there’s the stranger factor: this feels like a thing that could be a hell of a lot of fun with folks you know. The group right before mine seemed to be bubbling, and they were a squad that works and plays together. My own group was a mix of couples who didn’t know each other. A very different dynamic, and one I’ve never particularly enjoyed.
A lack of familiarity with Rock Band on the part of the players made the sequences where the fictional band played songs painful. Like: leave the room painful. Luckily there was a balcony. Actually the balcony was kick ass. So was the space we were in, one of those found-Fringe spaces with serious limitations (all stairs, no elevator) and fantastic aesthetics. (I think it was someone’s apartment, or recording studio. In any case: it was rad and perfect for the event, looks-wise.)
The conceit that finding objects in the space would trigger flashbacks was a fun take on clue distribution, but the group I was with just turned that into a mass reading of clue sheets — almost all of which had the same material. Luckily the cast — there were three actors playing the roles of the all the non-player characters — was a joy to play off of.
And while I’ve been asked to not reveal the secret of the ending, that’s not something I can actually do anyway: I left Rock Band Murder Mystery having no idea “who done it.”
There’s a reason we have a “Workshop Worthy” category, and Rock Band Murder Mystery is a prime example. Offered up as a team event, and with a refined on-boarding process, this could be a winner. Although given how old Rock Band is, it might be better to stick to lip synching and air guitar.
— Noah Nelson
Happy Hour
Let’s not mince words: Happy Hour is uneven as all get-out.
A sketch comedy show that sprinkles in moments of audience interaction, this probably belongs in “Miscategorized” as the interest here in more performative than experiential.
Save for one gag that puts the “gag” in gag and needs to be smelled to be believed.
Look: sometimes the cast seemed to not have their lines down. Other times a missed tech cue left me laughing at the show. Other times I watched with my hand gripping my face like a facehugger, praying if I could squeeze hard enough that maybe the sketch would get back on track.
And I’m still not sure why we were given 3D glasses.
Then thity seconds later I’d be having one of the best laughs of the week, one that the show wanted me to have. That’s how every five minutes of the show was: from cringe to guffaw and back again. Bless this cast for being absolute troopers and never breaking for a moment.
I’m putting it here in the “Workshop Worthy” section because I think that creator Nina Childs could dial-in something by paring down some of the ingredients and focusing on execution. Although the ingredients she takes out might end up being the ones that make the show interactive at all.
(Also maybe move the olfactory gag towards the end of the show, as that could go terribly wrong one day and make the rest of the show impossible to get through.)
— Noah Nelson
Town Brawl
Town Brawl is a “slightly immersive” comedy that plays off the stereotypical posts on Nextdoor, a kind of social network thing for your neighborhood, and any number of town meetings. The attendees are varying levels of strange or petty or strange and petty. The types to complain about the free food offerings at the meeting or sticklers about the dumb rules and bylaws of their local community. This is where the “slightly immersive” thing comes into play too, the audience makes up the rest of this town meeting, and though a few will be called on to do something more interactive, most will spend the whole time watching from their seats.
The characters involved in this Town Brawl are…uh…broadly sketched. (Which is, honestly, probably an accurate reflection of who might attend the real life versions of these meetings.) There’s the overachieving blonde leading the meetings, the older cat lady type, a redneck obsessed with guns, and other eccentric folks. There’s nothing inherently wrong with broad, but sometimes with such a large aim, things will miss their mark, as with most of the characters here.
The characters that do hit their mark are the ones that tip the show into more out-and-out absurdity. This includes an art teacher who isn’t upset that dicks are being drawn all over the neighborhood so much as she is upset with the poor quality of the dicks being drawn all over the neighborhood. There’s the germ of an idea here, but unfortunately, as is, it ends up too close to an actual town meeting: kind of boring and only occasionally entertaining.
— Kevin Gossett
Miscategorized
Life Plan, or How to Live Your Best Life in a Collapsing World
The year is 2068. The world is, well, as the title says, collapsing. Much of it is uninhabitable, the pieces that can support life might be either super corporate (The Amazon Province, iTunes) or kind of unsafe (Gunstralia, Murder Park), there are so many jobs in porn (it’s the one thing the robots haven’t figured out), and Life Plan is the hot new thing. And you’re here to find out what exactly Life Plan can offer you at this timeshare-type presentation while you’re given a brief respite from the horrors of the outside world.
Let’s get this one out of the way first. Life Plan, or How to Live Your Best Life in a Collapsing World is not immersive. Yes, the characters address you as if you’re at an actual timeshare presentation, and there’s some light audience interaction near the end, but that’s as far as it goes.
What it is though, is funny and smart. As it satirizes where we’re going as a culture, it takes aim at everything from inaction on climate change to YouTube to Shallow to tech bros. An extended riff on Jack Dorsey that casts him as a totally different fictional tech bro might not make sense to the whole audience, but I had a small giggle fit as it kept finding new ways to poke at him. The show rips off new jokes at such a rapid fire pace that it’s hard to keep up with the punchlines and what it’s making fun of now.
The script by Matthew Latkiewicz and Brian Janosch makes the most out of all of those jokes and uses them to do an impressive amount of world building in a short amount of time. At the same time, the cast is uniformly great as they all handle the sheer density of quips and one-liners and make sure most of them land (and judging by the audience’s response, they did).
When it comes time for one of the characters to reckon with what Life Plan actually means for them, the show takes the moment seriously and grapples with what living in a broken world might be like. Life Plan earns the turn by making Life Plan something that’s maybe, sort of kind of appealing despite what it is, and then dives right back into the laughs. It’s a strong Fringe show, and even though this one has got to go into miscategorized because it is, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth your time.
— Kevin Gossett
Hell’s Finest
If Hell’s Finest were intended to be a simulation of what an eternity of damnation would be like for a theatre critic then it exceeds its design parameter.
Sadly, it is not.
I try to find good things to say even about bad shows, but there’s little here to praise amongst inert staging and a tepid format — not to mention the fact that there’s nothing actually immersive about the production. Call and response doesn’t really cut it. Even the cast, aside from one game young lady who seems to be having a blast, doesn’t seem to have their heart in it.
Every Fringe there’s one show that I leave praying that I don’t die before I can see another or watch some TV because I can’t stand the thought that it will be the last piece of scripted work I ever see. Hopefully, this year that dubious honor stays with Hell’s Finest.
Luckily, you will not have to tempt this fate, as there’s nothing here for even the most completest immersive head: we took the bullet for you.
— Noah Nelson
View our guide to everything immersive at Hollywood Fringe Festival 2019.
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