A Fragile Spell: ‘The Book of Separation’ (The NoPro Review)

Even the strongest of spells can be undone by a technical glitch.

Before I knew about immersive theatre qua immersive theatre, I knew about Odyssey Works. At least one colleague back in the Bay Area had worked with the performance collective back in the early-aughts, when the idea of bespoke theatre was even more radical than it is today.

In my post college days, in the shadow of the Dot Com bust and the Iraq War, I found the very idea that a group of performers would create an elaborate theatrical journey for just one participant equally intriguing and the height of decadence. I, who had grown up on welfare and went to a State school where I got that most useful of Bachelor’s of the Arts — a theatre degree— thought that it would be nice if everyone could experience such a thing. Or that I could afford to participate in such a creative process. Yet I knew that this was the providence of those further up the economic ladder.

In the years since some of my views on the accessibility of bespoke theatre have changed. Radically so. So too has the degree to which Odyssey Works’ methodologies have become available to other practitioners. Roughly a generation into the company’s existence, they were founded in 2001, and the group has trained a small army of artists, published guides to their practices, set up an incubator, and during the pandemic has even branched out to offer lauded online workshops.

While the gift of a full blown Odyssey Works performance remains a rare thing, the legacy of their work has been an undercurrent in the age of experiential theatre. You or I might not get to experience a live production from the company, but if you’ve been to a fair amount of experiential theatre in the past twenty years odds are you have been touched by their methods. It is no understatement to say that things would not be the same if Odyssey Works did not exist. Now, in the waning days of the COVID-19 pandemic here in the United States, the company has produced a remote work that is quite unlike any I’ve experienced over the months of lockdowns and shuttered performance venues.

The Book of Distance is a piece for two. Ideally friends who have been separated from seeing each other during the pandemic, but its structure can handle other configurations. There is, blissfully, no homework. The first ten minutes consist of an automated series of questions which take place over a phone call. OW’s Abraham Burickson — well a recording of him at any rate — does the intake work. The questions are largely about your friend, who you are assured is going through a similar interview at that moment.

These elements and more are woven into a narrative that unfolds through an audio-video anchored narrative. Not a movie or a TV show, but graphical sequences that accompany storytelling that is interjected with sequences calling on us to take action and then snap a photo of the results to send to our friend.

When it works (uh oh) it is decidedly quite magical. But when some unknown error tripped up a transition from one sequence to the next early in the piece, the spell fell apart.

I would spend much of the hour-plus runtime either suspecting or keenly aware that my friend and I had fallen out of synch. Somehow I wound up ahead of him in the narrative. This despite having to refresh my browser to get anything going at all, and after having checked with him via text that I should have still been hearing sound.

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What should have been an exemplar of Odyssey Works’ frameworks for fostering connection through thoughtfully constructed experiences instead curdled. The trust was broken and pretty much impossible to get back. Instead of admiring the narrative architecture and the texture of the text I found myself meditating on the ways in which the experience was out of synch with my own pandemic story arc.

Everyone has had a difficult year, and from what I’ve borne witness to and endured I know that not everyone is in the same place emotionally right now. I suspect those of us, like myself, who lost people and jobs and dreams over the course of the past year but who have processed it — or pushed through because the next crisis is already making demands of us — are at a vastly different place than those who are just emerging from their quarantine thanks to a second dose of vaccine. Or who are still on lockdown due to lack of access. Or who perhaps are still wary because the numbers associated with the Delta variant make them anticipate another surge. All valid experiences of our fractured world.

For the students of the craft: there is much here to study in the way Odyssey Works constructs their journeys. The craftsmanship is worth pouring over. The way in which all the pieces — audio, video, participation, interview — are mixed together to create a sum greater than the parts is sublime. Yet I cannot help but admit that, for me, the moment for the Book missed its mark.

This past Saturday, with the spell broken I found myself thinking that the Noah of February would have loved The Book of Separation, with its longing for connection and its moments that felt like I was receiving a long lost voicemail from a friend. But the Noah of June, who has been dosed up and strategically meeting up with other vaccinated people doesn’t want to go back into February’s headspace.

Saturday was sunny, and thanks to another review assignment I spent most of it inside, longingly looking at the trees outside my window. Wishing I could be soaking up the same rays they were.

At the end of the piece — and somehow we managed to get synched back up — the automated system rang my friend and I up and connected us. It was a nifty moment. But Zay had to get back to hanging out with the friends he was visiting back home in the Bay Area, as he had paused his afternoon to take this piece in with me. I let him go, and turned back to an evening of screens. Months earlier neither of us would have had anything to do and would probably have talked for an hour about some fine point of narrative theory as manifested in mid-90’s comic books.

Instead I was just alone. Back in the headspace of the dark months. Annoyed at tech issues and feeling more alienated than I had been when I started.

I doubt this is the effect Odyssey Works wants to create. I’m sure it’s not what they’d like to read here, and knowing the way these things work few people other than them will read such a melancholic review (save for my colleagues) but it’s where I wound up. There are likely people for whom this moment still needs something like The Book of Separation. Who are where I was in the winter, when the narrative of the piece itself seems to be set.

For them I hope this is a boon and a balm. For those of us past that point: I hope Odyssey Works takes up these virtual tools again, and crafts something for all the summers to come.

The Book of Separation runs online through July 18. Tickets are $30–120.

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