Student Blog: Theater of the Mind

Immersive theatre is a genre of the performing arts that has yet to fully emerge in popular culture but is beginning to take the world by storm. Now, some of you might be asking yourselves, what exactly is immersive theatre? There are many different definitions, but Theater of the Mind defines it as "a 360° journey that puts an audience at the center of a story." The audience isn't simply sitting in their seat, watching the action take place on a stage separated from them. Instead, they become a part of the story, observing it from all angles and influencing it with their own experiences. Audience members will travel through different environments and spaces, exploring with all of their senses including sight, hearing, tasting, and feeling. The show's site includes a page dedicated to "Sensory & Other Advisories," allowing people to know the levels of sensory stimulation that will be reached in Theater of the Mind.

Theater of the Mind has been created by David Byrne and Mala Gaonkar in order to take audiences on an immersive journey based on scientific experiments and their own life experiences. To quote the original press release, "Theater of the Mind will be a 15,000-square-foot immersive experience taking just sixteen audience members at a time through a journey of self-reflection, discovery, and imagination, inspired by and grounded in neuroscience. Led by a Guide whose stories are inspired from the creators' lives, audiences will explore how they perceive the world through sensory experiments that reveal the inner mysteries of the brain." The show was actually announced back in May of 2019, with plans to open the show with the DCPA Off-Center in August of 2020. But, as we all know, the coronavirus pandemic changed all of our lives, and the premiere was pushed back to August of 2022.

In writing this article, I had the wonderful opportunity to interview the two Assistant Directors of the show, Amanda Berg Wilson and Betty Hart. Amanda Berg Wilson is currently the Artistic Director of The Catamounts as well as a freelance theatre artist specializing in site-specific, immersive, and boundary-pushing works. Some of her previous awards include True West awards and Henry nominations. She has directed shows including The Wild Party and Between Us: The Whiskey Tasting (DCPA Off-Center); 9 to 5, Pride and Prejudice, and Steel Magnolias (Creede Repertory Theatre); God's Ear, Failure: A Love Story, Rausch, Men On Boats, United Flight 232, and Land of Milk and Honey, among others (The Catamounts). As a performer, Amanda has been in a range of shows like Sweet & Lucky (DCPA Off-Center), Detroit (Curious Theatre Company), There is A Happiness That Morning Is and Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage (The Catamounts). Select awards: 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2021 True West awards; 2017 and 2018 Henry nominations (Best Choreography and Best New Work.)

Betty Hart has been involved with many different productions including Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill (DCPA Garner Galleria & Vintage Theatre); By the way, meet Vera Stark (Fine Arts Center at Colorado College), Once on this Island (Town Hall Arts Center), Blackademics (Vintage Theatre), To the Moon and An Iliad (Creed Repertory Theatre), Polaroid Stories (Metropolitan State University), Scottsboro Boys and Crowns (Vintage Theatre); Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies (Aurora Fox); The Darker Face of the Earth; Evelyn in Purgatory; A Thousand Circlets; Jim Crow and the Rhythm Darlings (Essential Theatre); Loose Change; On Empty (Kaiser Permanente Arts Integrated Resources). She has also won the True West Award twice, once in 2018 and another time in 2021. Currently, Betty is an associate artist at the Local Theatre Company, where she was also a co-director of the 2021-22 Local Lab.

Kat: So how did you first get involved with Theater of the Mind?

Betty: You want to take that first Amanda?

Amanda: Sure! Once Off-Center knew that it was moving forward with the project, I was invited to interview for the assistant director position, and later that summer got offered the co-assistant directorship with Betty. We first workshopped it in September of 2019, so it's been a project that I have been a part of for a long time now.

Betty: Yeah, what I would add to that is that Charlie Miller had the list. He reached out to directors in town specifically because he knew that Andrew Scoville is a New York City-based director and that you're going to need an assistant director to maintain quality throughout the run. Andrew wouldn't be able to do that from New York, so he compiled a group of people that he thought could be potentials. And then Andrew Scoville, the director, interviewed each of us and then made the choices. And that's how Amanda and I got to work on this project.

Kat: And did you partake in any of the scientific aspects of the show?

Betty: Before we did the 29-hour workshop, we got to read about the experiments. During the 29-hour workshop in the fall, we got to experience them with the cohort of actors who were allowing us to begin to see how this entire production would take shape.

Kat: What did you do within the 29-hour workshop?

Amanda: We actually got to go through what was an early iteration of the entire experience. The experience works on a couple of different levels and it's been a priority of David's and of Andrew's from the beginning to really ensure that it [the experience] is working on all of those levels from a narrative standpoint and from an experiential standpoint. So we did a lot of work on really developing those things in tandem, although we didn't have the opportunity to really conduct the actual experiments. We focused more on the storytelling and the integration of the audience into the experience as well.

Betty: One of the things that we get to discover is how the three of us work with David. As the director and the assistant directors, we got to discover our communication path. We also got to discover questions that David had about the work. New work is all about discovery. And so we had the great opportunity to have a lot of discoveries, both from the performers and from the test audience in that 29-hour workshop.

Kat: Cool! So what made you want to be involved in this project?

Amanda: Oh, goodness, lots of things! I've worked on several other immersive projects with Off Center. I was in the original cast of Sweet and Lucky, I directed the immersive production of The Wild Party, and created one of the Between Us experiences. I'm really interested in this kind of experiential, audience-centered kind of work. It's actually filtered into my own work with my own company and other freelance opportunities. So I'm just interested in this kind of work in general. But obviously, you know, the opportunity to work with David was incredibly compelling. Not only am I a fan of The Talking Heads, but I also just am a fan of the evolution of his work. He is just an artist who has decades of being interested in investigating things and creating things in different forums, not just in rock music, but often in artistic installations. And so the notion of him working in this field in which I'm already so interested was incredibly compelling. And then on top of it, you know, getting to meet Andrew and getting to support another director was really exciting to me, because I'm often at the helm. It's kind of nice to be a part of a team and have the opportunity to be shoulder to shoulder and create something that's very complicated and interesting and exciting.

Betty: I was excited for many of the reasons that Amanda said! I'll add that I have not had the opportunity to direct immersive work - I've had the opportunity to be on the other side as a performer. So I was very intrigued about getting in on the ground floor and being able to see all the things that I study and discuss with other professionals from inside. And it's been such a joy and a delight, and my love of immersive is only increased. I also, of course, wanted to work with the Denver Center's Off-Center. They do incredible work, and so to have an opportunity to be a part of their work was a tremendous honor that I'm deeply grateful for. And then when it comes to David Byrne . . . David Byrne is a genius. I think what I particularly appreciate about David Byrne is there's a curiosity about him, where he's genuinely intrigued about how things work - He's curious about the world. I am a curious person and I adore people who have that genuine, childlike curiosity that allows you to see the world in different ways. And David Byrne has that. So the opportunity to be able to take a little peek inside is exciting! It's like the movie Being John Malkovich - I feel like we get to go inside David Byrnes's mind, both for the show Theater of the Mind, but also in this process of development and collaboration. Now, when people talk about David Byrne, they talk about him one way. We talk about him in a very different way because we get to see and experience the curiosity, the childlike joy, the collaboration, the really cool fashion sense! There are all these things that make up David Byrne and I wanted to be a part of anything that he was helping to create because I knew it was going to become a part of some really great conversations because that's what his art does.

Kat: So you said that the show started with workshops in 2019. Were changes made because of the pandemic? Did your thinking about the show change and/or evolve?

Betty: If you were conscious, the pandemic changed all of us, and so it also changed this work. The writers were impacted by the pandemic so they asked different questions during the pandemic and after the pandemic than they did before. We all changed as humans and began to question our lives. So all of that growth as humans has also changed the script writing and the process because we all grew. The entire team grew in the past two years and it's definitely reflected in the work.

Kat: What makes Theater of the Mind unique compared to other immersive theatrical experiences?

Amanda: You know, I think that the integration of this science will be, no pun intended, but mind-blowing on a level that I have not personally experienced. I think that this is really a "leveling up" for Off Center - The experience will be quite impressive.

Betty: I would also say, we don't often think about storytelling plus science equals a transformative experience. But I think that is the equation that David and Mala have discovered and have put into this piece. And it's a very powerful equation. I think everyone's gonna get a really great time experiencing it.

Kat: So do without giving away too much, what are three words you would use to describe the experience?

Betty: I think we should like a word at a time, Amanda, like I throw one in and then you throw one in. Unique.

Amanda: I don't mean this in the Buddhist sense, but contemplative. If you are a fan of David's entire body of work, the questions that it's investigating are some of those questions he's been investigating since the 70s. It's one of the appeals of him. Philosophical!

Betty: The next word that I'll use is communal. There is something that happens in each group of 16 that will happen with the other group of 16 and will not happen with the other group of 16. So it is a unique experience, but there's also a coming together and discovering what it is for us to be going through this. Amanda?

Amanda: Philosophical, contemplative . . . I think those are plenty!

Kat: Not going to use the third word, alright!

Betty: Third word . . . You know what? Fun. It's an awful lot of fun! I think people need to know that lest we take them down this deep Buddhist route. It is all of those things and that's why I think it's so unique.

Amanda: Well, so then I will say my third! It's whimsical, in the same way that he [Byrne] is. It's a piece that's very authentic to who he is as an artist.

Kat: How do you see the future of immersive theater in the world?

Amanda: I feel pretty strongly that it is the future of theater. I think there's much to recommend a traditional proscenium experience, and I will also tell you that every time I am at an immersive piece, the average age of the audience member is easily 30 years younger. We as theatre artists have to look really seriously at that. In the pandemic, I went to an immersive show, and it was sweaty and close. And I was testing some new kind of awareness I have with my body and space. But it was also sort of thrilling, almost in a subversive way. I was like, "I am close to these people and they are close to me!" So yeah, I do. I think it's an incredibly important evolution and the history of theater. And I think we, as theatre artists, ignore it at our peril.

Betty: I love that, Amanda. You know, it's funny, you talked about history, so I'm going to start off with that. I think it is. It is the largest growing segment of theater to come. And I think in the same way that 30 years ago, not everyone knew what hip hop was. We're very much in that place where 30 years from now, everyone will know what immersive theater is. There's a lot of research that shows that more than anything now, people are looking for experiences, and immersive theater inherently gives you a well-curated experience that you can talk about with someone and have two very different takes because it allows your lived experience to completely influence how the work is received - Which should be true of all arts, to be fair, but in immersive theater, it leans into that. When you think of what Amanda said about this idea of contemplation, the greatest works of immersive theater just allow for that adult learning space of contemplation, which allows it to go to a deeper space so that when you're experiencing it, you have one encounter, but then as you continue thinking about it days, weeks later, it can completely deepen in this beautiful fulfilling way, like a great meal with leftovers the next day - The spices just get a little bit better on day two. And I think that's really why immersive is the wave of the future. It asks something of the audience, and audiences are game - They're ready to go on the journey and be a part of the storytelling, not simply be seated and have the story wash all over them. I think that's part of why immersive theater is so powerful and why, 30 years from now, everyone will know it. I think it will grow. You will have huge immersive experiences, you will have tiny immersive experiences, the gambit will continue to run and you'll have VR as a part of it, you'll have no tech as a part of it, you'll have it indoors, you'll have it outdoors, you'll have things that we haven't even considered yet simply because no one is sitting down right now going, "That's it!" And that's the beauty of immersive - The ideas are allowed to come to you and you can roll with them. What was impossible days before becomes possible. That's what happens with all art and it's certainly true of immersive work.

Kat: Is there anything else that you would like to add or include?

Amanda: We're supposed to make sure you know that David is not in the show!

Kat: Oh, yeah, I saw it was mentioned in the FAQ.

Amanda: I will say that he's not physically in the show, but he's in the show.

Betty: His presence is felt.

Amanda: I'm about halfway through his book, How Music Works, and it's truly amazing to me how he really is somebody who has a body of work that is so thorough and varied, but consistent in terms of what it's investigating. This piece is no exception.

Kat: Yeah, this guy I knew took me to American Utopia last November and I must confess that I hadn't known who David Byrne was! But then after the show, I was like, "This is the greatest thing I've ever seen!" I saw it 10 times, I went to his art exhibit . . . Like you said the curiosity, it connects. He still has that childlike wonder that just draws you in

Betty: And I think it's worth saying that David has been researching the science for years before writing this play with Mala, and that curiosity comes through. He continues to ask questions. We had a great session with him last week where we got to read the newest draft and he's still asking questions - How can it be made better? He is that consummate artist. And so I think for fans, they're going to appreciate that his artistry, his curiosity, his genius, and his playfulness are all on display in this piece.

Amanda: And I'll just lastly add that it's exciting because this is the perfect place that this piece is being developed. I feel so lucky that we live in a town in which our biggest arts organization has an experimental wing because they are allocating the resources to a piece like this, even though it is really an experiment. Off-Center has been experimenting for some good time now with this kind of work and so it's a nice meeting of the minds.

Kat: No pun intended!

Theater of the Mind will be running at York Street Yards from August 31st to December 18th, 2022. Tickets can be purchased here. Availability is limited, so purchase your tickets quickly! You must be 18+ to attend unaccompanied, and visitors aged 16 or 17 can attend if accompanied by a guardian. Other frequently asked questions are answered here.