 Welcome to DG Academy. Tonight we are taking an inside look at Strata, which was an exciting experiment in immersive theater in Pittsburgh. My name is Roland Tech. I'm the Director of Membership at the Dramatists Guild, and I have to my right Gabb Cody and Sam Turrick, both of whom were co-creators of Strata, and we will get into more detail about that later. Let me just give you briefly, just brief biographical information. Gabb Cody's plays have been staged at Quantum Theater, Coconut Grove Playhouse, Williamstown Theater Festival, Urban Stages, and Workshop Theater in New York City, and play scripts recently published her comedy Fat Beckett. Sam Turrick's directing credits include the world premiere of Fat Beckett at Quantum Theater in Pittsburgh, and in New York, Sam created off the top of our heads winner of the Big Apple Improv Festival, the Second American Revolution, Prussia, 1866, The Magnificent Hour, Insecurity Guards, and Itamar Moses' Dorothy and Alice. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Strata, I thought it would be interesting to ask Gabb and Sam to just briefly start by telling us how the citizens of Pittsburgh in the summer of 2012 first became aware of something called Strata, like how did it first emerge on the scene? We began with an advertising campaign, and that campaign actually, I will immediately start with a side note and say they won an award, and Golden and the Silver Addy for the campaign, but we began with an ad campaign of glossy, slightly beatific, but strange looking people in track suits with descriptions of what could happen to you if you were refitnessed, but on the posters themselves, we just had phrases, I feel better, I want more. And were these posters, where were these like bus stops? They were at bus stops, they were plastered all over town, we had large posters on buses. What dimensions are we, like are they as big as those? Some of them were as covered this wall, in fact they were as big as this poster space here that you have here, and some of them were on the back of buses, and there were posters on the back of buses that were black and said just one word, which was eye consciousness, and we had other posters that were compilations of these images, and those posters were about the size of this wall, and that's how I started, not I started, but that's how eye consciousness was introduced to the population of Pittsburgh as an idea, and these were all over the place before we said anything else about it. Okay, so that was starting in like July of 2012 or something? I think we might have started in June. June, okay, and then when did you start then adding to the mix, like, oh, this is something you can buy tickets to, and like how did that get out? We had a lot of conversations about how were we going to relay information to the public that this was something that they could actually attend, because we knew it wasn't a theater event in the most classical sense, but we also knew we wanted to sell tickets. So on the posters we had an address, which was stradapittsburg.com. Okay, and so, and that website became live, like, shortly after these posters? At the same time. At the same time, okay, so then people would go to stradapittsburg.com, and the first thing they would see is stradapittsburg's first refitnessing center, introducing eye consciousness, and then I can't, can, let's see. The pathway to personal enlightenment starts here, beginning today. Our strategic training research and testing agency is open to all citizens of Allegheny County in its surrounding areas. Located in downtown Pittsburgh, the stradacenter is fully equipped to deliver cutting edge proto-corrective treatment to attain clearer, brighter, happier living. We encourage all interested candidates to purchase their admission to perfection today. Okay, and then, now, some more of this. And then people would scroll down, and then I see their schedule and appointment today is in lieu of purchase tickets, schedule and appointment, okay. So that's cool. If you kept scrolling down, you'd find some testimonials. These were live videos. Are these all your actors? Are these your cast members? Actually, many of those are my students, except for the little kids and the older gentlemen. But we created these images for the campaign before we cast the show. Cool. Because I was curious about that. There are a couple of people in this campaign, or maybe just one who's not on this screen. You'll see him in the video, and he was cast in the show. Okay. I'll go to the website, and I'm curious enough to actually click schedule and appointment. And then I order my tickets, and then I believe I get an email with a link to a video. Is that right? Yes. I want to show people the video, and when you call up the video, I want to make sure it's ready that Terry's on it before we start playing it. Are you... Terry, tell me when... Because I want everyone who's live-streaming to... Yeah? Okay. So let's play this, and we'll just watch. It welcomes you. Your acquisition of my consciousness is only possible through this level-tensable re-fitnessing package. Please remember to come with your LevelWorks partner. Having a LevelWorks partner is one of the most effective ways of staying committed to your re-fitnessing program. It appreciates the referrals of its member and shows his appreciation by rewarding them with clarity points. This website is a great resource for our members. Please review the five basic survival tips for your re-fitnessing experience. You are the keeper of your own perfection. I'd like to briefly explain another exciting benefit offered to all of our new members. Please repost to your destination as indicated in your re-fitnessing reservation email. Please arrive at the location and time indicated. Your safety and our anonymity are LevelWorks partners. Please speak to no one outside of your checkpoint contact coordinators. Should you be unable to attend your re-fitnessing? Or should you, for reasons of lack of clarity, diminishment of temporal management, substance abuse, selfishness, or other unforeseen obligation obstacles, please contact the number indicated here and in your reservation email. Your checkpoint contact coordinator will provide further instructions. Please leave valuables that you are unable to leave in a locker on the square of premises at home. Please dress comfortably. For your own safety, please refrain from tight fitting clothing or high heeled shoes. Congratulations! Your choices are epsilon magnetic. You are emotion. Eye consciousness is not only a state of eye. Okay, wow. And I just learned that, I don't know how I missed this, that STRATA stands for Strategic Testing. What is it? Re-fitnessing? Just back it up slightly. Strategic Testing Research and Training Agency. Okay. Okay, so I see this video, and then assuming that I don't completely freak out. Which some people did. Well, that would just be an indication that you really needed to be re-fitnessed. Seriously, in need of like... If you started freaking out, it would be a good indication. The hyper-epsilon level of re-fitnessing. Okay, so then I go to... What happens next? As she said in the video, you were given a location to which you had to report at a certain time. And did it say exactly who you were looking for? It said, look for someone. We gave them a description of the person, what they were wearing, and that they would be your checkpoint coordinator, contact coordinator. And we gave you a password. And a password. And at that point you had to go through a test... Okay. So, but this is... I just want to be clear, this is in a public place, right? It's like somewhere out on the street. It was on Boulevard. Yeah, a corner in downtown Pittsburgh. Okay, and then... So people would go... And then what was the language that you used for a partner? A level works partner. Level works partner, which is like a friend that you would go experience it with. Yes. And then... Then the people get taken to the secret location so that nobody ever knows... Well, they meet... They're checkpoint contact coordinators named Freddie. Okay. It's always Freddie. It is always Freddie. Thank you. I was going to save that. Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. It is always Freddie. So they meet Bus Dot Freddie, who then takes them to the next Freddie. And that Freddie walks them down the street. Right along one of the rivers in Pittsburgh. Right along one of the rivers. Passed a couple of bridges. Into a long alley. And Freddie would be sort of preparing you. He had a sort of pattern that he would do to prepare you for the... Jeffrey Carpenter, who is Bricolage. Bricolage is Jeffrey Carpenter and Tammy Dixon. And Jeffrey really early on in all of our sessions said he wanted to avoid lines. He didn't want people to ever approach the experience by lining up. And it was really a brilliant stroke of genius because it created the whole beginning part of our process in which no one ever lined up. So everybody always felt that it was completely about them. Yes. He was determined to leave the sort of box office experience out of it as well. Cool. To theatrical experience. You're an intimidating alley. An intimidating dank dirty alley. And at the end of that alley you would be guided by Freddie. And Freddie would open a door and there would be someone else who would then step you into... A non-descript gray metal door just in the side of it. And once you stepped into that space you were in an almost spa-like reception area. Okay. I just have to interrupt. On Twitter is it drop? Hashtag new play. Hashtag new play. So if you want to tweet questions you can tweet questions at hashtag new play. Okay. So this is what you would step into. Okay, so you've come out of this grimy alley and then you come into this very pristine nice. Okay. And then... Can I just back up first? Because I think I left something out. Okay. People have filled out a questionnaire before as part of this. Is that right? Yes. When you buy a ticket and you watch that opening video there's also a short questionnaire. Okay. And the questionnaire contains some like essential like basic biographical information or what sort of... The questionnaire is padded with questions. I wouldn't describe them as nonsense questions but questions it's padded with a series of questions and then there are a couple of biographical questions tucked in there. Okay. And again, a person could go alone or they could go with a friend. But they could not go in a group of more than two people. Nope. Okay. So then they're there and take us through what happens here. So they meet Freddie at the reception area and she welcomes them in a very... You put your belongings in a locked locker. She has you sign in and she gives you a warm towel. That's nice. It was very soothing. Okay. And does she make it clear that she knows who you are? She welcomes you by name. Okay. Then you and your level works partner are taken down the next hallway and given an mp3 player and headset with a meditation on it. So you sit in a quiet space by yourself and listen to a meditation on an mp3 player shortly after which you're collected by one of the guides and put on an elevator with your partner. And now is it at this point that the paths of people through the strata experience can begin to diverge? Yes? Yes. The first room that you encounter is this one. Wow. This was a racquetball court. Jeffrey Carpenter again who founded Bricolage and was really the mastermind of strata. Bricolage, the word means making artful use out of what is at hand. And almost everything that you see in this photograph was found in the space that we were working in. It wasn't found in this configuration. Right. And are you willing to tell us what the space had been before you were doing your show? Well, this was a the building had been I think we can default that. It had been a Bally's fitness center. This space was a racquetball court and Rob Long who is an amazing designer. Once we decided that this was going to be the archive room and we decided that it was going to be filled with stuff created this beautiful sculpture of stuff. Okay. And who's this woman here? She's the archivist. And does she interact with? Yes. Okay. Now, here we get it. All right, so now I'm going to back up a little bit because now we're sort of getting into the so you're starting to get a flavor for just how unusual this is. And Gabb, I want to ask you as a writer can you talk a little bit about like the difference between you know, as a playwright working on the normal plays was like you wrote these pieces which allowed for a kind of give and take, right? So how did you go about that? How did you sort of... Well, I've given some thought to this whole process because it was the first time I've ever written something like this. It's the first time something like this is exactly like this has existed. And I thought about my own process if I write a play on my own and how I think about a subject or I research it and I synthesize that research and thought and I turn that into a piece of writing. But in this case because it was collaborative writing we talked as a group of artists of in detail over a long time we shared source materials and then I had to synthesize that group collaboration, so that conversation and that's not unusual. I mean collaborative groups often will have a writer who synthesizes what they've done. So I had to synthesize all of that and I would bring in, in answer to your question I would bring in scenes in which I had written the part of the participant. So I wouldn't write exactly what they said but I would leave the space for them to say something and then write a reaction as though they had said things within a certain vein and so it was an act of sort of writing and then improvising for myself what the possibilities could be that a person might say and then what reaction to any number of possibilities would be effective. And so it was a strange process and then sometimes we would workshop those so I'd bring in a scene and Sam and I would sit down and I would read the scene with the archivist and someone else would play along as though they were a participant and we would see how that would go. And how many people were there? How many of you were there like sort of working on this from the beginning? The initial group was six or seven and then we gradually brought more people into the fold after we had a clearer idea of exactly what we were going to do. We had an opening group of Tammy Dixon Sam Turrick Nina Sarnelli Riley Harmon was the lead artist on the project and Riley and Nina are both artists who came out of the CMU MFA program and although I've sometimes described them as conceptual artists they defy labeling because the CMU program says they turn out artists. So the group of those two artists, Tammy, Jeffrey, Sam and I and then the other Bricolage staff creative staff was also involved and then Rob Long the designer Andrew Paul who's a sound and technical designer as well was there for part of the time. He's a game designer. He actually introduced the idea of video game logic into some of our conversations utilizing that. So Sam, did you audition actors once you knew? There was an audition process that I was not involved in because I was working on another project at the time. I was involved in it as Tammy, Jeffrey, and I cast the show. Okay, and so you had the core group and then you wanted to supplement and you Well actually, I don't think anybody in the core group was in the cast of the show. We conceived of it. Tammy and Jeffrey and I shared directorial duties and then we cast the show with people who came to auditions. Wait, so you shared directorial duties. Can you talk a little bit more about how do you rehearse for something like this? That's an excellent question. The main thing that we did was worked with the ensemble to create with them and help them to understand what the entire piece was going to be like for them as they experienced it and for the participants as they experienced it. We did a lot of ensemble building exercises. What we knew eventually was going to happen was the cast would arrive like any cast arriving for a night that they were going to do a performance, but then once they went off to their individual rooms, they would not really be able to interact with each other again over the course of the evening. They'd be passing the participants off to each other from room to room. So one of the major challenges that we faced was how do you create a single ensemble that is living in the same world when they'll be performing basically solo. It was like we were doing 25 solo shows all at the same time, but we wanted them all to live in that same world. So lots of ensemble building, lots of talking, lots of explaining every night after the performances, after the rehearsals and after the performances, we'd get everybody together back in the room again to discuss what we've learned, what we've figured out and what we were terrified of, what was going well, and that's how we kept the group together. Did different actors start to... I imagine part of it is they're also developing their characters right in the rehearsal process? So I'm wondering like did different characters gradually evolve slightly different relationships to the Strata philosophy? Oh definitely, and there was a question I remember from the actors early on which was, are we employees of Strata? Or do we just exist as figments who live in these rooms? They wanted to know what their relationship to this to the Gate Corporation, which I haven't mentioned, the Gate Corporation is the corporation that started the whole Strata. So I think each of the actors had an individual experience and I think it was very intense for many of them we actually have an actor here this evening, but I think that they had to perform in a very special way because unlike other immersive theater experiences where a piece of the show will go on in front of the audience and the audience might move in and out of it we asked our actors to interact directly with the audience in groups of one or sometimes two and that interaction was, I know it was pretty trying on the actors, it's a pretty intense thing to ask of someone to perform something over and over with individuals in a small space and you know I will say that I wrote for particular actors you know once I knew them Cassie who is here this evening I knew her before the show and so when we thought about what she was going to do I knew her and I thought oh well she will be really wonderful in this particular room and so yes Cassie can you come up and sit here do you mind because that way you could I could ask you a question to Cassie Bremmer, Cassie Bremmer right oh thank you you can share when you first entered Cassie's room you would see it was a beach the floor was covered with sand you were asked to remove your shoes before entering the room so you could feel the sand under your feet and there in a bed on the beach was a beautiful blonde and a white shift and then you'd meet Cassie and Cassie and what did you before we talk about the audience experience I'm just curious what did your script look like was it my script was unlike a lot of the other scripts because mine was more of a it was a monologue that directed it was a monologue that directed the participant as to what to do it wasn't really a question to answer it was more of a do this now do this do you remember when this happened and did you have people who really didn't want to play along with you a lot of so did your play right and or your director give you like sort of an arsenal of things to use I mean how did you prepare for that or is it possible to prepare for that it's not possible to prepare for that the I guess the main thing because my room was very intimate may I divulge I'll hold off it was an intimate I'll do this if you go too far okay it was an intimate experience where basically I invited you in I described a memory that we shared that was upsetting to me and then I asked you to join me on the bed and play with my hair and the conversation it wasn't ever really a conversation well it was sometimes because people wanted they wanted to talk to me because it was such and sometimes sexual I don't know sometimes it was a weirdly it was intimate we'll just say that it wasn't sexual there was sexual there was sexual tension we're clear about that but it must have been very different if there were two people versus one person or did you only get one person at a time depending I sometimes had two people there was an out because people were very uncomfortable they could travel with a partner but they normally ended up splitting up at some point anyway I only had two people in my room at one point because your level works what is it called your level works partner your let you and your level works partner inevitably get split up during the experience right okay so actually actually pretty much right away we would separate people and there would be occasions where you might down a long hallway see your level works partner again but you wouldn't be reunited until the end of the experience okay okay so now I mean you must have had someone who refused to get in the bed with you right I had one woman there was one one specifically who would not pretty much everybody else did she refused and she said my husband better not either no to which you said he did already to which I replied who okay and so there like were you improvising or yeah yeah okay so there's a lot of improv here well when we looked Cassie is a wonderful improviser and when we looked for actors and went through the casting session we particularly looked for people who both were very committed authentic performers because it was such an intimate experience that they had to be people who you believed and they also had to have improvisational skill had to feel comfortable improvising because it didn't matter how much I wrote the script there would be some event that in order to fully engage with the performance the performer would have to improvise weren't there cases where you had like a whole few pages of material written and you had actors who said like I did I wrote a I overwrote a scene for a woman who would wash your hands so you would go into the restroom and she was the bathroom attendant and she would wash your hands and I I wrote her about three pages but once we determined the timing of the evening we realized it can only really be about three quarters of a page but she really liked the material and it was all about her and all about a story that she was telling so as the show progressed she would choose which part of this three page monologue to deliver to which participant so it's I mean it's interesting because you know I mean every actor on every stage responds to an audience right I mean it's just like an inevitable part of theater and you're taking it to a new one step further you're giving them like pay five pages of material and they're going to do like 60% of it depending on who they're I really couldn't be attached I told them to I think that my note to the actors was embraced the chaos hmm so for the actor I'm just curious Cassie like on a given night this was this show show being done all day all afternoon all night I like what was your day like were you there for two hours five hours ten hours I mean call was at six I believe call was at six o'clock and our first participants arrived seven ish and then I left sometimes eleven thirty okay so it's a long hall for you and then also for the audience member some of them are encountering you near the beginning of their journey others of them are encountering you near the end of their journey right so their whole emotional the whole shape emotionally of the journey depends on the order of rooms they go into someone never encounter her at all because not who decides that how does that get yes Roland you're looking lovely this evening oh we're not supposed to know I need some refitnessing sorry that remains a question okay that will we had we had a couple of expressions we would use all the time and that remains a question but physically if I'm in one room and then I assume that the interaction with one or two actors in one room comes to a close you're always given a choice somebody is going to move me out of that room into the hall into the next you're always given a choice and depending on your choice or your behavior in the room you would then move to another room I see okay okay got it and some people make epsilon magnetic choices and others do not and you would and you would be given something that very clearly indicated where you should go next okay and then but nobody would ever end up accidentally stumbling into the same room twice that that was you made sure that didn't happen that pretty much yeah and if we also made made an effort to give people returned and several people did come back to do it again we made an effort to give them a different experience the second time through to make sure that they'd see they'd meet different people wow okay so that's a lot of a lot of managing like I mean talk about stage management that's like a whole jigsaw puzzle of it so talk to me about what what's the end wait I don't know what's the end of what there's something interesting at the end with a bar and some music or something what's going on there people go through all this experience and then what happens at the end so here's a room here's a room the doctor room go through an examination with a doctor in this room your answers would be recorded so you would be asked about your level works partner in this room and your answers would be recorded and you would meet this gentleman at the end of your experience after at a bar at the end of your experience and your favorite song would be playing because you forgot that three weeks ago when you ordered tickets you filled out a form and in the form they asked you what was your favorite song right? often people wouldn't even realize they wouldn't even notice now if you have two people who went together they're not both there at the same time they'll be eventually they'll get there but they don't arrive there at the same time I was just going to say it was always a really magical moment when people were reunited that they hadn't had the same experience and then do people are people sort of shoved out the door in some way we had a long discussion about whether that was what were you debating about? I'll say something brief and then we should I'll just say that one of the things that we talked about early on was why what was the point of this experience for the participants we wanted to send them into the world questioning whether everything wasn't indeed part of Strata so that they would have an experience that would be intense enough that they would leave the experience and feel that the experience was going on and that did happen actually several times to people who thought that we had created experiences well beyond the physical space that we had created it in and we would get emails and calls why did you put that person in the parking garage I know that that person in the parking garage was definitely part of here they'd leave the experience they'd walk out on the sidewalk another of our catchphrases was you are in the experience now that was something you heard many times over the course of the evening it's something that we continue to say to each other because we continue to be in the experience I continue to say it to participants I've had strangers come up to me in the grocery store and touch my hair really? absolutely and my response is always you're in the experience now and I'll walk away really quickly I just don't know how else to respond I have to say that people did, we had one participant who came to us and said I'm so happy I saw the show although my friend begged me not to come he said it was a cult and that people were getting indoctrinated we thought this was fantastic we created a theater show that people thought was a cult that makes a great segue can we show the anti strata video okay so before we show it well actually let's just show it and then you'll explain what we're seeing and I have to mention that we had wonderful collaborators Hannah I'll show you this so there was an anti campaign that had a twitter feed against strata and on the twitter feed you'd find lots of information that they had dug up on strata and the gate the dirt on strata and there's a there was a leaked video that someone had made that the cooperative had infiltrated okay okay so that was put on the internet there was a whole anti campaign and you masterminded that well I have to say that it was definitely a collaborative effort and Riley Harman Jeffrey, Tammy everybody who was involved we definitely all talked through it we really liked about it it gave there was a tiny link down here strata lies and if you click that you sort of through the looking glass and one of the things that we really liked about it was that it gave the whole project history because you have to be around a while to have an anti campaign we really liked that idea right so it implied that the leader of the anti campaign was named Rob Clifton and by the by the second or third week of strata Rob Clifton was loose in the building and abducting people through the experience so he was messing up their experience and often he was also he also existed as a corrective for participants who would go rogue okay so now bricolage is known for doing site specific work well maybe not, I don't know but when I was in Pittsburgh I remember that I went to see something at bricolage and the space was their space which had been reclaimed it had been like a sauna or something right something like that bricolage and I would say that strata was a launch pad for a movement into more immersive pieces they had done immersive pieces before certainly they had taken people through multiple interesting experiences outside of their own space and they have done site specific theater I think strata has moved the company more in that direction there are certainly projects on the horizon that will also be immersive projects you know the question is we don't do strata again we do something else so they are certainly I think that Jeffrey and Tammy are really amazing artists and they are engaged in this community and internationally so they've traveled a lot they've experienced larps and other shows that they've been inspired by so they are really a guiding force in Pittsburgh and I think nationally they really are wonderful artists and they bring people into the process I wanted to ask about the space because it's just was the whole thing I guess what I want to ask is is it kind of a chicken and egg thing like the space and then you tried to create something to maximize the use of that unusual space or did you have the idea did you all have the idea and you went searching for that abandoned ballet's fitness again it was really the space that was Jeffrey and Tammy and they they had the idea of doing a show of space and then they found they looked for spaces that might be useful they found a space and I think around the time that they found the space they approached Sam and me about our involvement and you know it had a huge gym is this just another example of like how Pittsburgh is so much cooler than New York I mean like in the sense of like because I was taking that as red I have this idea that like in Pittsburgh and maybe I'm you know correct me you know if I'm wrong but that in Pittsburgh there's all this real estate and that the city is like invested in opening doors to artists and saying here this is abandoned let's use it let's maximize its potential I think that it's it's chicken and egg the artists know that those spaces are available and then it's a matter of figuring out who who owns the space or who's in control of it and going to them and when artists come to those people and say we have this idea there's a lot of buy-in from the community from real estate people the Pittsburgh cultural trust is a hugely influential force in town that does have a lot of contacts with the real estate and they were a co-sponsor of this of strata right? and did they hold this real estate was this part of there? I'm not sure is that the case? I think so okay so do you both feel like you now have the bug the immersive theater bug and you want to do more of this kind of thing yeah it's a it's a very interesting way to reach people on a level that going to the theater and sitting down and watching a play doesn't and we mentioned before that video games are interactive the internet is interactive the way people have just so quickly over the last 20 years become accustomed to picking and choosing the ways that they will interact with their entertainment means that as theater artists we're looking for ways to meet the audience in the way that they have learned they want to be met and that's one of the reasons why this project was exciting for us and why we're interested in continuing to work in this way we're also we'd never leave the theater as well but we are seeing ways in which the play that Gab is writing and directing right now has lots of interactive elements that I don't know if they come directly to us from Strata but there are definitely things that we learned from the experience of Strata that now that we're in a proscenium theater we're using to keep the audience engaged and involved in a way that is I think more interesting for a contemporary audience than just sitting in the dark and watching a show does that mean you're building in intentionally like more forks in the road in the storytelling or like well I'll tell you this I am doing a production right now and it's in a very old theater in Pittsburgh and what I've heard is that that theater is going to be torn down fairly soon they're building a new theater and it's very very old theater and I actually said to the cast we're going to do a site specific show but the site happens to be a theater which I find amusing because it's just silliness but it's also very true you know that how do you look at a space and you know this is not new we're cycling back to an idea I mean we have Farnia on 42nd street and we're cycling back to ideas that they were using in the open theater and well before then and you know so these are not the concept of taking theater out of a theater is not an original idea but I do think it's progressed with the way that we interact with media and the way that we what is viewership what does it mean for you to be part of an audience what is an audience I think all of those things are definitely affecting the way that I think about my writing and also the way that I write is now I find that I'm very collaborative I often write collaboratively and I was really thrilled to work with this team of people that was also comprised of artists and to have that synthesis of ideas coming from people who I wouldn't normally have thought would be part of my process how many artists were there I mean you're talking about now visual artists also right so how many I mean you said Jeffrey right because one of the directors and Tammy was one of the directors the producer but doesn't Tammy also do a lot of am I remembering this correctly like when they do the radio plays does Tammy do the sound she does well Tammy actually I should correct our earlier statement and say that Tammy did contribute to the show itself because at some point during the show there was a very old telephone booth and you might receive a phone call in the telephone booth and it would be or rather the phone would start ringing in the telephone booth and you were the only person nearby so it was your job too and that was Tammy I should probably not reveal that it's too late now so who were some of the other artists and I mean was there a costume designer there was a costume designer Rob Long I mentioned earlier Hannah Nielsen Jones who's worked on theater like this before they're a big group of people I mean for me I think as a writer I definitely began to through the process of writing Fat Beckett certainly and then into this process I I have had a letting go of my idea of what traditional theater means to me I mean I still enjoy theater in its most traditional sense but I lately have actually found myself itching a bit even sometimes when I go to the theater because I think that there's an immediacy that is often lost in performance and that immediacy is something that Sam and I grew up with because we grew up into the theater through improvisation and so we always had this idea that whatever happened in a performance would only happen that evening and that that would be a very special experience and therefore unlike anything that you could consume in TV or film or any other medium that was recorded so that improvisational background has been the foundation for how we've made written work you know it's that there's an immediacy to the performance and to the evening and to the moment of the show so even though I'm writing a show right now I'm putting in improvisational elements into it so it will be different every show and I like that I like the experience of being part of something where you can feel the energy of the unexpected and it makes the theater making maybe a little bit more like sculpture maybe I mean I don't know you have like a lot of different elements that you're kind of playing with I don't know if it was made of modeling clay so it never dried if it was made of modeling clay never dried that would be yes right like an oil painting versus acrylic or something I don't know should we open it up to questions from either the twitter world or the real world if you're on twitter our hashtag is new play right okay and does anybody here in the room have a question yes cat okay I'm going to repeat the question so that people can hear okay so the question is could you elaborate more specifically about what you've learned from having done Strata that you're now bringing into more traditional theatrical setting well I think that the idea that the experience of seeing the show begins as soon as the audience member enters your realm is really important and with this show that I'm writing now I couldn't control the way that the audience bought their tickets and I couldn't control the way that they first heard about the show in the way that we did with Strata but what I could do is base my writing behavior on what I knew their expectations would be and create an experience for them that started as soon as I was able to have them available to me so I think that's part of it is looking holistically at the creation of theater as something that everything is the show and I'm not talking about lobby performance you know I'm not talking about bringing actors improvisationally into the lobby and making them interact with the audience although that is certainly something that you could do but I think Strata helped me conceive of what the onus is on the writer or the creator to lead the audience participant through the process immediately I think so often we go to the theater and it's a series of steps and those series of steps sort of lull us into an attitude about how we're going to experience something and so I'm interested as others before me have been and how to break up those expectations that have become so solidified when you say a series of steps do you mean I walk into the theater I get my play bill I sit down the lights go down the curtain comes up the lights go up somebody enters on stage is that what you mean? Broadway but other than that you're right curtains are expensive yeah they are but that's what you mean? I mean that how do you purchase your ticket how do you hear about the show when you walk into the space what happens the curtain doesn't go up because there aren't curtains but the show begins and then people talk and then there are scenic movers who move the scenery and then there are and this is certainly not all performance I'm not making blanket statements but I find that the theater against which I would describe we are working or building our forms is theater where the play is sort of a discreet element of your evening and the play may even pause so that the scenery can be adjusted and then that's not the play or there are so many elements of the experience that are discreet and then oh now we're interacting again with this and now we stop and now we're asleep and again I'm not saying that this is all theater but I'm saying that there are these constructs that are repeated enough that they become traditional and determined that no one fall asleep but you know you just made me think of something else that's strange and interesting about this is that you know when you go to see a play you also have the experience of at intermission or even at the end of the play walking out you're talking with people about the experience you're over hearing other people talk about the experience with strata it was very much sort of a lonely kind of relationship well at the end you joined with a big bunch of people so when you left your final experience you joined a bar and there were all of the people who had been in your cohort for lack of a better word so anyone who had entered the space at a certain time you would encounter and then people talked all about it oh did you go to the beach room girl's hair no I didn't you touched her hair did you consciously think about that it seems to me that's not to be too crass but from a marketing point of view it seems like it's important for people to fuel word of mouth by having people have an opportunity to go oh my god that was unbelievable or something you are pointing to something we did make an effort to allow people to talk with each other and to compare notes after the show and yes to generate word of mouth we also and this is something that we've been thinking a lot about realized that the group catharsis that is so much a part of what makes great theater great theater in an experience like strata is not something that's going to happen because you're not part of an audience that is one big group of people all experiencing the same piece of the same piece of performance together as writers and directors I have to say it was really strange because we couldn't ever watch the show with the participants so I just have to say I received we received a tweet here which I feel I guess I have an obligation to read okay this is from lies pittsburgh lies strata not a theatrical performance this is just a mask hashtag new play lies I think that person needs to be refitnessed and if they would immediately return to a facility and continue their refitnessing program they would reach I consciousness and not be so blurry you're the keeper of your own perfection okay now tell me about this beautiful ass we're looking at here there was a peep show strata really and it was it there was a surprise involved peep show okay but you're not going to tell us no don't tell there was a surprise involved and it was there were there we were we were looking for lots of different kinds of situations that were that were fraught that that made people have to choose make a decision are you going to look or are you not going to look what does it mean if you look what does it mean if you choose not well I choose to look at that just I'm saying for the record okay wait are there two actors no that's a mirror the whole space was filled with mirrors so you're seeing in the foreground you're seeing the behind of the person and then in the background there on the left is the is the mirror image of that person oh well there's a surprise yeah that's the surprise that's a great surprise this is Scotland was in our advertising campaign and he played a monk and after you visited Cassie she would send you to her brother who was a monk oh and he this was a beautiful what did he do he did not speak he would he would he would spend time with you he was a very beautiful beautiful soul Scotland has a very beautiful soul he would silently pray beautiful soul or his strata persona but Scotland mostly the reason Scotland could pull this off he's just a lovely human being so you'd pray you'd bow to the floor and pray and then I'm sorry this just raises an interesting question because you know it's like the tempting thing for an actor is you have to get the person to pray with you how do you do it without miming he's not allowed to speak so what does how does he each person is like a new experiment it's fascinating right I it was very interesting to me because I we were in a close proximity we were in an adjacent room and I could I could tell what was happening in his room basically you could hear or just feel I couldn't hear anything because there was giggling sometimes but that was it was almost as soon as Scotland did something there was the just from your point in your experience you knew to follow along and people were so good about just doing what he wanted because you immediately meet him the first thing he does is make eye contact with you and it's a very intense eye contact that says I'm I am your friend and then you just go from there and it was really interesting to hear people's experiences with him it would go from kind of an uncomfortable giggle to a very just silent agreement that this is what's happening and that's fine it reminds me of last night I went to an immersive theater thing at the Japan society and we were going from room to room to room and this woman who was one of the actors she was had this amazing quiet commanding way like when it was time for us to move to another space she would just look at us and she would go I mean I'm actually not doing it the way she was just like you know just very subtle it was amazing like it's incredible like how people can we had wonderful wonderful and you wrote to their strengths so there was something about him that made you think like I want to give him silent work yeah well he had been in a mask and movement class that I taught for a while so I knew him well and you sometimes had two actors together or no usually they were alone the peep show had a bouncer but he was outside he'd send you in and then were there were there also sort of ushers or were they those also actors once you enter the strata facility Roland and participate in refitnessing towards gaining eye consciousness your experience will be facilitated by many sometimes checkpoint coordinators sometimes facilitators but those people will help you with your experience of need being how did you come up with some of your language like refitnessing checkpoint contact coordinators one of the first things that Jeffrey did was he tasked me to write the gate language so you created like so I created the language of the corporation so that was the first thing that I did I I had a wonderful source which was I had a bunch of health club manuals and so I read those quite a bit and there's just some wonderful sort of tone of lingo in there like how did they strike you like I guess it's all about like betterment exactly so we built the I built the language of the gate corporation and I came in with expressions I came in with expressions that facilitators could use and you know monologues from some of the some of the voiceover monologues that people would use and so that was one of the very first things that Jeffrey asked me to do which was create a comprehensive language of the corporation that can be used everywhere did you ever have anybody deviate from the language? Oh absolutely I mean there was no there okay first of all you can never control actors as much as you want to as a writer as much as you want to as a writer to get up onto the stage and tell them something so in this environment there was even less control and there was an agreement that there would be an improvisational element so therefore people did deviate and I don't even know the extent of those again couldn't see the show couldn't see the show I was told that one of our checkpoint coordinators took to relaying information in a way that was entirely different that we had originally determined as the experience progressed so there were some things that were absolutely within our control but you know the show we sometimes think about what would have happened if the show had run for another four months because the show was an organism or this piece was an organism in which the participants created an element of it and people would started coming back and they started planting objects around the space and they started buying into the anti-campaign and they started creating a whole they started leaving stuff behind in the space yes it it was an organism wow it's incredible and you didn't clean it up well I didn't clean it up but I was doing something else then alright we have a question from Sarah Tuft thank you Sarah gab to what extent were you able or interested in shaping experience via traditional three act structure hmm oh in the Stratocon thing oh wow well as Cassie mentioned there was there were elements that were fell into patterns that I couldn't necessarily determine so if someone might come to Cassie's room early or they might come to Cassie's room late in their experience however there was definitely a beginning that led you through to the sort of the end of the first act of your experience and then a series I knew what experiences would be in the second act and I knew how the experience ended actually Nina Sarnelli who's a wonderful artist who is part of the group she really devised the penultimate experience which then led you into the the bar experience at the end so you know there was a certain amount of information that I had so that and that we all had I mean we all discussed how we would lead people because through an experience that would have an arc and that would have an effect on them so we discussed this at length as a collaborative group and did our best to create a structure that began someplace and had an arc had heightening within it and then led folks through to the end so were there some room ideas you had that you threw away? Oh yes many. Lots of them yeah. Do you want to share one? There was one that was supposed to take place on a moving train and we just couldn't figure out a way to you know one of the things that we talked about a lot and that Riley Harmon who's the lead artist and an amazing conceptual artist and I worked we tried to get the train car room to work and we couldn't figure out a way that it wouldn't be obviously not the train car and what we managed to accomplish with almost every room was a sense that something real is happening here and he and I worked together on one of the rooms which involved a test that the participant had to take that involved watching videos and he found videos that were increasingly they were all real they were all very gory and the participant was prompted to continue watching increasingly gory videos and this was something that we developed from a place where originally we had been calling it the torture room and we wanted to enact a moment of torture and we were guided by the Skinner box, the Skinner? I think so. The experience that they had put test subjects through if you press this button you're torturing someone in the room. You mean Milgram, right? Thank you. We looked and looked and looked and looked for a way that we could do that although we knew that there was a certain hump of suspension of disbelief that we were never going to be able to truly get over that everybody would always know that it wasn't real that the idea that you were actually torturing someone through a wall or something like that wasn't real. You make a good point which is that we really strived to create immersive experiences that people could give way to that they could suspend. It actually sounds like in a way you were trying to create something where people would not have to actively suspend their disbelief but you would just be kind of something like the peep show was sort of like that. Ultimately you are peeping through a peephole at a scantily clad person. So you are doing that. That is actually really happening. Now you know that this is part of the experience that's been created for you that you're not a strip club but you're in something that's like a strip club and you're looking through a peephole at someone who is agreed to be there but you actually have to make the decision about whether you're going to look through this hole at the person who's on the other side of it. So there's something both you understand that's not real about the experience but there really is a scantily clad person on the other side of the hole and you get to decide whether you're going to look through the hole of the person or not. What made some people got really angry right? A few. I'm wondering what kinds of things pushed people to button. Okay, well I'll give you the thought that some of us have thunk which is that we like to describe the experience as a mirror the space was filled with mirrors and the participants were required to participate and I think that some people I mean I know even for myself as a writer that going through the experience I could never have the experience that a participant could ever. I went through and although it required this intimacy and it required you to really give way and relax into what was happening I personally couldn't do it because I was sitting there thinking oh I really have to shorten that no okay that works that's not what I said and so that was my experience of it and I think that I love of course that people had really strong reactions that some people loved it and some people hated it because why make anything that people aren't going to feel passionately about one way or the other right? I loved that some people hated it although I think that the reasons they did probably varied a bit but I would probably boil it down to there there was something about having to give way to the experience that was upsetting to them. What would you say Sam? I think that's right. What do you think Cassie? For me for my room specifically I think people really had to come to terms with the fact of whether or not they were comfortable with themselves enough to be intimate with a stranger in a real way and I think my personal experience was I learned a lot about humanity as an actor through the process and seeing the way that a married man reacted to sitting on a bed next to me versus a young man in college versus a woman in her late sixties which was the most beautiful experience of my life actually she sat down and she like held me and I actually just cried it was beautiful but I think it really forced you I think the arc of the play as I would see it if I had gone through it I of course never can but you have an arc within yourself emotionally to see how far you will let yourself go and how far you will let yourself be challenged in a real way because these weren't an actor you were going in as yourself being confronted with experiences like in my room where you were you had to comfort me and if you didn't comfort me what does that say about you right right because and that was the one that was my intention was I needed these people I needed them to do something for me right and that was which is immediately engaging it was weird to see how they reacted did you have a question I'm sorry there was connective tissue and some of that connectivity would be we had the grandmother up as one of our slides earlier and if you went to the grandmother's room which was like almost like a nursing home room and she would talk to you as though she knew you and she would ask you do you have a letter for me and some of the people did have letters for her and those letters she would ask them to read them aloud so they would have to open up the letter and then they would read the letter aloud and it would be signed by them and they had been given that letter in an earlier room now I've divulged too much too I'm in trouble but there was connective tissue between experiences that people had and certainly thematically I mean there were definitely motifs we spoke so much as a collaborative group about the issues that we were tackling and so again the synthesis that I did was to take those those themes and those motifs and to then wind them through or thread them through the piece so I think in that way it was a holistic experience was there track A track B, track C that people were being sent to yes there were a couple of experiences with similar experiences but once they were cut loose their choices would determine their destinies you had a question given the kind of the setup and the language having grown up in Southern California with Scientology and any number of actually pre-existing before that self-realization movements I would wonder going here whether that element is unconsciously or consciously carried through in the way my experiences unfold in other words did that idea of self-actualization or whatever you want to call it become a through line in terms of how I experience it that is more of a subtext well the construct was definitely self-actualization so there was a lot of language around reaching unconsciousness and being refitnessed I think that it is something that is subtextual in the entire experience but generally once we would cut people loose there wasn't a lot of directed this is for your own good one of the ways that it was subtextual or almost subconscious was there was always when you were in the halls between the experiences voice over playing in the hallways that was a similar voice to the one congratulations Roland Tech has reached unconsciousness so you would be sort of hearing that language of the self-actualization but it wasn't within the scenarios but it wasn't within the scenarios we went around this for a bit and we talked about people could gain clarity points but they never really did Andres I think you talked a little bit about the logistics of the finances of the actors talking about the finances of doing this kind of a production actually I'm curious how many total actors were there there every night there oh that is a good question like 12, 15, 20 roughly 25 there were 3 freddies it's interesting because the economics are a real big question like how do you economics are a really big question I mean luckily for Sam and for me we are not the production company ourselves so Bricolage was able because they have such a great reputation and they've done such amazing work in Pittsburgh they have a lot of support and they were able to create a budget for the show so I cannot tell you much about the finances except to say that the experience is limited to few participants and therefore it does become a question of how do you sustain a show for a long time when you only have a few participants and you have many actors it's definitely a question and I would say in this case the project was an art project that was supported by the community but if someone wanted to do this commercially they would have to look at it in a different way and run it for a very long, you know, or run it for a certain amount of time to recoup yada yada I think they had a variety of rates depending on artists but I would say it was an expensive I mean not compared to New York in any way I'm sorry I've lived in Pittsburgh too long so now it was actually a very inexpensive ticket in New York rates but I don't know do you remember how much the tickets were I don't want to say because I'm not you could probably check that out online it's probably there question here were there any extreme reactions from the audience members and did any of it border on psychotherapeutic I have to recuse myself a little bit from answering this question and say that Sam and I were making a film shooting a film for a lot of the time that this was in performance and we would go into it but we didn't run once the show was up and running we were not the people hard at work running it so we would come in and experience it and watch it but we were not on the ground but from what I've heard there were some strong reactions but the team that ran it Caitlin Roper and I know Riley Harmon was up in the control room they were like a well-oiled machine they were able to direct participants to safe places and I know that there was a system of sort of safety within the whole construct as well to make sure that everyone always felt like they were okay so I didn't really see any psychotherapy per se I didn't really devolve into that from the experiences that I saw but it was intense how long did it run just for a month is there any thought did anybody ever before you tore it all down anybody think about like oh we should take this on the road or somewhere else yes and we talked about extending we talked about it's really I don't know the discussion of moving it ever really because it was so specific to that site and what is going on in that building now I don't know do you want to do a show do you want to speak to the psychotherapy do you want to speak to the psychotherapy sort of um uh no uh I mean I think the most not necessarily violent reactions but the most visceral reactions we had were actually people coming in who wanted to play the game they were there to figure out what was going on and I had people searching for Rob Clifton and the who was in charge of the lies campaign and they would come in and if it had been their second time they would cut me off and stop me talking and I had one man offer to rescue me and he said I will carry you out of here I'll get you out of here and it was kind of like it was a very interesting experience to have that versus I mean in my room personally they weren't giving me much they were taking mostly in my room they were taking what I was giving them I think there were a few reactions towards the end of experiences that people they were they would get touched by something because you had to at a certain point if you allowed yourself to open up to the experience there's no reason there's no way that you couldn't be touched by something and there were um participants who were very emotional at the end and it was it was fun for me not fun that's the wrong word but it was nice for me to come out of the dressing room afterwards and there was one woman specifically as soon as she heard her song playing when she exited the experience she broke and she just she couldn't function at that moment and we sat her down and the people who had been within her experience came out and we all sat with her and she just thanked us and it was a I wouldn't say it was psychotherapy necessarily for some people I have a friend who's a she is a professor of statistics and she's rather dry and she came through the experience and it was profound for her she didn't break down and cry she didn't need psychotherapy but she did just I think yesterday she brought up to me one of the rooms there was a dancing room where you could dance with someone and um I don't know I think that the idea of psychotherapy that that I mean some people had strong reactions but I would say that you know if you take someone to a good play and it has profound issues that they you know you can expect that they're going to break down we took someone to a puppet play a couple of weeks ago Sam and I took to its dark outside and we brought a friend with us and she she lost all of her it was um so one of those like I don't know what's happening and there was nothing immersive about that experience so I don't I don't think that you know being having a reaction to theater or to performance is was exclusive to us in the sense of people needing therapy yeah it's kind of the beauty of theater in general right I mean never know what you're going to get well I think we're out of time but thank you so much thank you Sam thank you Cassie and thank you Gabb and thank you tweeter audience tweeter audience sorry tweeting audience anyway um thank you very much this was really great thanks do you know more do you know more