Everybody knows sequels never live up to the originals.
Everybody knows that remixing creative teams doesn’t work.
Everybody knows that poetry makes for rough storytelling.
And every so often, everybody’s wrong.


“When immersive theatre works — and I mean really works — it creates a feeling that you’ve sidestepped into a reality that exists just parallel to this one.”

That’s how I kicked off my review of Keight Leighn’s #bedrUmplaI last year, and when Leighn announced a direct sequel #bedrUmplaII(2) with a new collaborator, Elisabeth Stranathan, I wondered if a second trip to the well would find it wanting.

I should have had more faith.

To be sure: Keight Leighn’s work continues to exist in a kind of grounded liminality. A place where poetic license is the prerequisite for a journey into inner space. Stranathan is a poet in her own right, grounded in the written word in a way that compliments Leighn’s improvisational flourishes.

Yet #bedrUmplaII(2) is not a loose 45 minutes of magickal antics. Like it’s forerunner, there’s real structure here. Leighn greets you outside the suburban apartment, deep in the San Fernando Valley. Here she plays the role of your housemate, who had a strange encounter the night before with your “Stori” — a reflection of who you are who was missing a critical component: the actual you.

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It’s a conceit that’s set up in the instructions given beforehand, which as you to meditate on the ideas of the self we present versus who is really there underneath. Honestly: I wasn’t entirely feeling that framework when I engaged with the injunctions ahead of the show, and yet sitting side by side with Leighn I found a path between where my heart was at and what she and Stranathan had prepared.

Like #bedrUmplaI, I’m going to be a bit vague here, because there’s magick afoot, and I wouldn’t want to sully the spell.

Time with Leighn is broken up with what could be called a “self administered purification rite,” and then it’s Stranathan’s turn to play psychopomp. Like Leighn, there’s something magickal about Stranathan. The two share a penchant for wordplai, excuse me, wordplay that suggests they have access to other dimensions than this one.

It’s easy enough to aim to make a piece where your aim is to draw forth some element of the participant in order to give them some profound sense of presence. A hell of a lot of shows claim to do just that. What makes #bedrUmplaII(2) work is that for the creators it is a profound act of sharing of their own selves which enables the audience to meet them where they live. Literally and figuratively.

This piece couldn’t work with other performers, and it’s not meant to, but the act of sharing of the self in order to get the audience to mentally show up: that right there is the alchemical formula at the heart of profound immersive work.

Which is happening again. In a townhouse apartment off the 170.

#bedrUmplaII(2) runs through October 12th at a private residence in the central San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. Tickets are $44.

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