The theater’s the thing, and it’s time to let loose. Yet, “Deus Ex Machina” isn’t the Shea Theatre you’re used to seeing — any more than any Eggtooth Productions experience is what you’d expect.
“If you’re an audience member, there’s something so magical about standing in the wings and watching an actor who’s 10 feet away from you in show light, and they’re in a completely different universe,” says John Bechtold, director of the out-of-the-box production that runs twice nightly from Aug 30 through Sept. 1. “That kind of language is so exciting. We wanted to give the audience a chance to experience the simple magic that goes into making theater in the first place.”
But magic in a crowd loses some of its, er, magic.
So just 18 audience members in each nightly performance will be led in clusters around the building to meet the ghosts and sensations that inhabited this theater from the time it first opened in 1927 as a vaudeville theater and movie house.
Unlike “A Winter’s Tale,” Bechtold’s Eggtooth adaptation of Shakespeare’s obscure play in which theatergoers wandered around five floors of Greenfield’s Arts Block last September, “Deus ex Machina” is not based on an established script. Yet it’s nonetheless immersive theater, “more anchored in the building’s history and kind of the language of the theater itself,” he says.
Immersive theater, a site-specific approach that “puts the audience in the environment of the show itself,” in Bechtold’s words, directly involves the audience and all their senses. Here, the vignettes that audience members are escorted to experience “in a kind of rapid-fire and very disassociated kind of way” are inspired by the rich history of the newly renovated theater, from its Vaudeville acts in the late ’20s and ’30s, through its wild Renaissance Community days in the 1970s, and its own rebirth as a community performance center.
“Its a geographic script about the place and the history of the Shea and all the amazing things that have gone in that that building,” said Linda McInerney, artistic director of Eggtooth Productions, who points back to her involvement on the theater’s programming committee in the 1980s after the space was first renovated from its commune days.
Literally, “god from the machine” in Latin, the title refers to as an extraordinary plot twist where a seemingly unsolvable dilemma is suddenly resolved by the intervention of an outside devine force — like a god being lowered to the stage — into the storyline to set things right.
Bechtold, Amherst Regional High School’s theater program director and coordinator of the Deerfield Academy Summer Arts Camp, was first steeped in immersive theater by volunteering to work on London-based Punchdrunk theater company’s 2011 New York production of “Sleep No More,” an interactive, film-noir-like adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth.” (The hit play is still running.)
Inspired to create this piece by the Shea’s “coming into its own again” after renovation last year, Bechtold said, “It just seemed like a calling to come make work in that space. ‘A Winter’s Tale’ was proof that audiences will come to site-specific, immersive work around here.”
“When an audience goes to a staged play, they only see a thin slice of all that goes on,” says the director, who envisioned a production that moves playgoers “from standing in the wings to being in the makeup room to kind of exploring the strange, beautiful labrynth that is a theater building.”
From its basement makeup and dressing areas to its second-floor lighting booth, The Shea is, said McInerney, “a really intricate, mazelike building with a lot of quirky nooks and crannies, where a lot little of things will happen. We love nooks and crannies!”
Adds Bechtold, “Everything’s fair game, from dressing rooms to the projection booth to stage wings to trap doors. You name it, were doing something with it.”
Each of the shows in the 300-seat theater is limited to just 18, and each audience will be led through more than a dozen discrete places, said Bechtold.
“The building has so many beautiful small spaces, so we kind of wanted small audiences in those spaces. We wanted to make a piece that was kind of intimate and very personal, which is why there are limited tickets available,” he said. “What we lose in quantity, we can raise in quality for those audience members who do get a ticket.”
Audiences will see “mostly the same show” as they’re led in groups through repeated vignettes, he adds, yet some audiences “will see things no one else will.”
Tickets are available at:
www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3049710