Take a Closer LookInside the UP CLOSE Festival of Immersive Theatre for Young Audiences

UP CLOSE began as a series of conversations with my longtime collaborator Summer Shapiro. Having each made work for young people in a variety of contexts and continuing to be both frustrated and inspired by our respective arts ed communities, we found ourselves on opposite sides of the country dreaming up a different type of theater experience for families. Without knowing much else, we knew we wanted to eliminate the distance of the more traditional forms of theater we’d experienced, and bring in the sense of immediacy and warmth we loved about our teaching practices.  Serendipitously, around that time, New Ohio Theatre reached out to me about their Theatre for Young Minds programming initiative, and soon our conversations had a focus.

My research began, as it usually does, with a look into the history of the area surrounding the theater, in this case Greenwich Village, which led us to Jane Jacobs. Once we discovered the rich history of the building  – New Ohio is in the basement a landmark building that once housed the National Archives Record Center  – we ran with the idea of creating an interactive neighborhood archive where we’d stage short form, immersive works honoring the area’s past. From there, we leaned into Jacobs’ principles for a healthy community (short blocks, mixed-use space) and it evolved into an experiment in using immersive theater to engage young people with the histories of the spaces they inhabit, which is basically how it exists today.

In my work with Trusty Sidekick Theater Company I’ve found that using a young person’s POV to develop ideas that reinvent space actually brings adult audiences into fully satisfying new types of experiences. Kids often have no preconceptions about what theatre should be, so we allow ourselves to be driven with that same sense of curiosity and agency.

Also, I think there’s a great opportunity for discussion with our kids about what happens when untold stories of Greenwich Village history are unearthed. I think it’s important for kids and families engage themselves in the idea that when we ask, “what is the history of this place?”, we take on the responsibility of honoring indigenous communities and other voices whose histories are often excluded from collective memory.

I am excited by experimental art for young audiences because there are little boundaries in the experience. The young people are invited to find their own innovative way into the piece; whether it is by picking up and exploring a found object in the space, connecting with a cast member face to face, or just sitting back and watching from the corner—they experience the art on their own terms. They are not being told to sit and watch—they are being invited to explore with wonder! Immersive theatre is the best way to engage young people because it gives them something that they lack in so many other areas of the rest of their lives—agency! By creating short-form theatre, every interaction is immediate and important. The young audiences are engaging in the storytelling moment to moment.

Young people learn and live through play, exploration, and experimentation.  Immersive theater offers them the chance to have a multi-sensory, tactile experience in which they have agency and the freedom to choose their own adventures.  It’s exciting, as a cast member and creator of the work, to devise our structures so that they are malleable and responsive to who shows up in the room, and how they show up.  There is nothing more thrilling for me as an artist than the immediacy of the direct, one-on-one encounter with an audience member—especially a young audience member. Young audiences are honest, curious, and adventurous, and typically don’t come to the theater experience with a lot of immovable, preconceived notions of what art and theater can or should be.

In 2018, I had the pleasure of acting as an audience member for the UP CLOSE festival! I so enjoyed my experience at the show, so when Peter called over the summer and asked if I wanted to co-produce, I jumped on the opportunity. Peter and I had had a couple of shared artistic experiences over the years, including the Artistic Professional Development Program at Lincoln Center’s Big Umbrella Festival, and I knew that we both shared the same beliefs about TYA: the art has to be elevated, professional, and innovative. We have had a fantastic time working together and curating the artistic teams. It is an amazing mix of folks—TYA experts, experimental theatre innovators who have very little experience in TYA, and everyone in between. But our common goal as a team is our pursuit of uncovering untold West Village history and curating unique ways for the audience to interact with it.

From the moment the audience members walk into the space, they are cast as important characters in a story which cannot continue without them. After a pre-show experience of exploring the underground Archive, they are whisked through space and time to three different sites of the West Village to learn about the untold stories of those places. Audience members will learn about these sites through all of their senses—by feeling the dirt of the garden, listening to a sound stored away in a jar, and watching a tense chess game play out onstage. They will experience these histories through a full-body experience!

The addition that I’m thrilled about this year is our artistic choice to cast young people in the festival. As Young Archivists, the young people will be the centerpiece of the festival: inviting audience members into the space, and ushering them from one piece to the next. As an educator and director who really enjoys having young people in the room during the devising process, I know that their points of view and input will make our show that much stronger. As the producer of a festival that is created FOR young people, it only made sense for us to include young people in the creation of it as well.

I am tremendously excited for Up Close 2019’s engagement with our whip-smart, enthusiastic, imaginative young devising team who are helping us build the container for the experience, and who come to the work with a variety of creative backgrounds and interests.  I am jazzed to learn from them about what this work could be. I’ve gotta say that I am also SO excited for the return of Pizza Rat, custodian-come-archivist. Get ready for more putrid beat poetry and crumby incantations.

As the word “annual” implies, we plan to become a fixture at New Ohio for NYC-based family audiences every holiday season, while also growing to other communities. I love the idea of working with the artists of another US city and finding inspiration from one of their community organizers (like Cesar Chavez in my hometown of San Francisco), in the way Jane Jacobs worked for NYC. We’d love to partner with communities all over and use the recipe we discovered to see what sorts of local history we can dig up!

I’m looking forward to continuing to explore more and more uncovered pockets of West Village history. By creating art that is powered by our curiosity for these hyperlocal stories, and connecting family audiences together through the power of theatre, we hope to make Jane Jacobs proud.

I’d love to see the UP CLOSE Festival sprout up in other neighborhoods around NYC, the country and the world.  It’s such a brilliant concept–this hyper-local celebration of the history and spirit of a neighborhood. I hope that we bring it everywhere and engage with artists and family audiences deeply connected to a plethora of communities across the globe.